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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 3
RESPONDENT: Just something I wanted to clarify.
PETER: A pleasure to hear from you again. I like it that you have questioned what I wrote about fear because as I wrote it I realized that this was somewhat new territory to explore, in that it has not been much written about before. I remember when I wrote the Fear chapter in my Journal that Richard was particularly interested as he said fear was not a particular issue for him. When I wrote the chapter I found myself writing equally about doubt, as fear was also not a major issue for me, but I certainly experienced doubt. In hindsight much of the doubt was related to being a pioneer in this process of actualism – the usual ‘why me?’, ‘is it a con?’, ‘does it work?’, ‘is it possible?’, ‘why hasn’t it been discovered before?’, etc. What always drove me on, rather than let fear and doubt get in my way, was the pure consciousness experience of purity and perfection of this physical universe that lies beyond the self-centred real world experience we take for normal or the Self-centred spiritual world experience that has traditionally been peddled as the Truth. This pure experience, combined with the down-to-earth sense of what Richard was saying, proved too irresistible a lure to let either fear or doubt hobble me. * With regard to what I wrote to Gary about fear, I would preface my comments by saying that I often pick up on something he writes and use it as a way of digging in to a particular topic. I often explore the traditional real-world and spiritual-world views and then relate my own experiences with what I have found to work in my experiences with actualism. I appreciate this way of writing because it allows us to mutually explore a particular issue without the usual emotional personal reactions dominating common sense explorations. This way of mutual investigation is something I have been able to pursue directly with both Richard and Vineeto and I would encourage anyone who is interested to join in the conversations on this list. It’s what is called questioning. It’s such fun to be able to let your hair down and talk to others in this way because the only thing that can happen in my experience is that you challenge yourself – you stick your neck out beyond what you consider ‘safe’ territory. The very business of actualism is to prick the balloons of belief, to replace the morals of good and bad and the ethics of right and wrong with verifiable facts, and to abandon what is silly and doesn’t work and discover what is common sense and what works. How else to come to an understanding of what is actual but to eliminate that which is not actual? And surely it goes without saying that this process of understanding what is actual is essential if you ever want to experience actuality. Just as an aside, you may find it useful to ponder upon the very word ‘actual’ in Actual Freedom – it is abundantly rich with meaning. * But to get back to the topic of fear – the point I was attempting to make was that I have never challenged fear, as in tackling it or confronting it. I have rarely sought out physically dangerous situations in order to ride the hormonal highs they produce, because the risk of injuring or hurting myself seemed too high a price to pay and I eventually opted for safety. Similarly, I eventually saw that seeking out emotionally confronting situations with others in order to ride the hormonal highs they produce was but a very cheap self-gratifying shot – most usually malice justified as standing up for my supposed rights. I also spent years on the spiritual path where I sublimated my real-world instinctual fears of survival by immersing myself in the cozy cocoon of spiritual belief with its notions of life-after-death, reincarnation, inner peace, Godliness and a real self. The essential approach of all spiritual and religious belief is to transcend fear by imagining that you truly are an immortal spirit and not a mortal flesh and blood body. The feelings of fearlessness induced by denial, delusion and devotion can even lead to the ritual suicides and sacrifices so common in many religions as one dies to serve God or to gloriously pass into some mythical heavenly realm. What shook me out of Eastern spirituality was when my Guru died, declaring he was just passing through, and then left yet another religion on the planet in his wake. I realized that even when he was alive he really was just a ‘visitor’ for he was literally ‘out of it’ most of the time. He lived in a dissociated state in an imaginary world entirely of his own making – not in the real world and most definitely not in the actual world of people, things and events. His supposed fearlessness, in common with all God-men and Gurus, was but a con because it was based solely on his own delusion of immortality, omnipresence and omnipotency. * Given the failure of the gung-ho traditional approaches of avoiding, challenging, denying or sublimating fear, the question remains – what to do about fear? How to eliminate it? The process of actualism offers a third alternative and it takes its clue from the practical successes of cognitive therapy in reducing or eliminating specific fears. Put very simply, cognitive therapy involves cautiously repeating a situation that usually evokes a fearful feeling and repeatedly observing that, despite the feeling and hormonal rushes, no actual danger ensues. Eventually the event, circumstance or situation can be experienced without the normally associated feeling of fear. Three aspects are relevant to the success of this method – to stop avoiding, to observe and be aware of the feeling as it arises, and to both understand and experience the distinction between the feeling and the actuality of the situation. Now although cognitive therapy has proved the most effective method of reducing or eliminating specific fears, it is vital to remember that the primary aim of actualism is not to eliminate fear but is to become actually free of malice and sorrow. The elimination of fear is therefore a by-product of this process and not the central focus. If one’s sole aim in life is to reduce or eliminate fear then cognitive therapy seems to offer the best solution and then you can spend a lifetime slowly ticking off one particular fear after the other. The other way is to take the traditional spiritual path of feeling God-like, God-aligned or God-protected which does not eliminate fear but only produces the delusion of fearlessness in order to suppress or sublimate the underlying feelings of fear. The only effective way of eliminating instinctual fear is to eliminate the source of psychological and psychic fear – the ‘he’ or ‘she’ who is feeling fear – and that process is actualism. This process can be seen to be similar to cognitive therapy in that it first involves stopping denying or avoiding and then encourages observing and becoming aware of feelings as they arise, and understanding and experiencing the distinction between the feeling and the actuality of the situation. The essential difference between the two processes is scope and depth. In actualism all feelings, both savage and tender, good and bad, desirable and undesirable, are up for scrutiny and one is aiming to dig deep into one’s own psyche so as to eliminate the very source of malice and sorrow – ‘me’ at my core. So, for an actualist, cultivating an ongoing awareness is the key and the idea of challenging fear, as in tackling it or confronting it by seeking out physically dangerous or emotionally confrontational situations is unnecessary and can well be a diversion from the main issue. For an actualist, being an actualist in a world of materialists and/or spiritualists is already enough of a challenge and the everyday living in the world of people, things and events already always provides sufficient circumstances to investigate all of the range of feelings, emotions and passions that arise. As Gary pointed out, it is the issues that we are avoiding that are critical and therefore actively seeking out new challenges does seem a little pointless. Just to give you a personal example that may help to illustrate the distinction I am trying to make. When I first came across actualism I had been living by myself for some two years after the ending of a relationship with a woman. When I was confronted by the proposition that ‘if I couldn’t live with one other person in utter peace and harmony, then life on earth was indeed a sick joke’ I was moved to action – I was moved to challenge myself or to put myself in a challenging situation. To do this I had to act despite the feeling of fear that arose and it took me some weeks to act to rise to the challenge despite the fear and doubt. The initial serendipitous event was coming across actualism, the specific challenge then required that I put myself in a challenging situation and the next serendipitous event was Vineeto saying ‘Yes’ to my proposition. However, for many of my other investigations I was already in challenging situations such as in my work where serendipitous events, meetings and circumstances abounded and thus it required no action on my part to be challenged and tested. Whether challenging yourself to radically and irrevocably change – to become actually free – requires a change in circumstances at any stage only you will know, for only you know what you are avoiding. * For those wondering where or how to start, the basic approach in actualism is to tackle whatever issue bugs you most, whatever is your particular thing that is making you most angry or most sad. Go for whatever of the obvious passions that you want to be free of and then investigate every feeling, belief, moral, ethic or psittacisms that stands in your way on the path to freedom from malice and sorrow. If you want to be free of malice, then make it the most important thing you are doing when you are doing it. Go about your daily life as you normally do but notice all the times when you are annoyed about something – it might be that it is a rainy cold day, it might be the driver who cuts in on you, it might be something a friend said or something you read or saw on TV. Notice whenever you blame someone for doing something or not doing something. Notice how you talk to other people, what feelings you are having while you talk. Are you being confrontational to this person, a touch aggressive perhaps? Are you feeling resentful, bitchy, sarcastic, cynical, critical, dismissive, arrogant, above-it-all, scornful, irritated or bitter? Do you often berate yourself or give yourself a hard time? Do you take out your anger on others? If so – who, when and why? Can you catch yourself doing it and become aware of it while you are doing it? If you can become this aware then you have found the secret of actualism, for neither the savage nor the tender passions can stand the scrutiny of awareness. In this case, you will have begun the process of becoming free of malice. You will have begun to get ‘the bugger by the throat’. Your malice will noticeably wilt and eventually wither as you become more and more aware of it and all its subtle, and not so subtle, nuances. Then you can do the same thing with sorrow. By running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ you start to notice all those times you are feeling melancholic, sad, lacklustre, bored, resentful, cut off, remote, detached, lonely, depressed, burdened, weighed down, resigned, sympathetic, empathic, gloomy, or hoping for a better day. You start to notice how much time you waste being unhappy and not being here. You then start to notice what things or events trigger these sorrowful feelings. You notice the seduction of wallowing in sad memories and you start to notice the feelings you get when you listen to certain music or watch certain films. The trick is to become aware of the sorrow-full feelings when they are happening, put a label on the feeling and discover when it started and what caused it. The process of becoming aware of your feelings and becoming aware of how they are preventing you from being happy and from being harmless is the process of actualism. While the process is simple and straightforward, the very real challenge is to take it on fully – to make becoming happy and harmless the most important thing in your life – numero uno. There is no doubt that fear will arise on occasions but if you set your sights on becoming both happy and harmless you will find that fear, like all of the survival passions, cannot be sustained in the light of awareness. RESPONDENT:
The second statement which exists on the How to Become Free from the Human Condition page seemed to be somewhat of a contradiction until I re-read your first of the above paragraph. ‘Watching the hang gliders over the cape twigged me to comment on the distinction between challenging fear by undertaking dangerous activities and the process of becoming aware of, identifying, observing and progressively eliminating psychological and psychic fear in action in one’s own psyche.’ I would assume that the meaning of the second paragraph is to challenge, by paying attention to and extending the scope of awareness rather than by challenging to desensitise. PETER: Your query particularly related to my use of word ‘challenging’ in the quoted passage – I gave some thought to amending the passage, but decided to leave it as it is for now. The beliefs and instinctual passions that fuel malice and sorrow in the human species certainly need challenging and eliminating, for how else are human beings ever going to live in peace and harmony? Or more to the point, how else are you going to live with your fellow human beings in peace and harmony? How else are you going to be free of malice and sorrow? How else are you going to be happy and harmless? How else are you going to be free of the Human Condition? In the process of eliminating your beliefs and instinctual passions you soon discover that the only thing that stands in your way on the path to Actual Freedom is a feeling – the feeling of fear. So ... what to do? If you really want to be totally free of malice and sorrow then you accept the challenge ... and do it anyway.
RESPONDENT: Thanks Peter for your lengthy response, just wondering though, was that a yes or no? (hehe) PETER: To recap your query – The ruthless challenging, exposing and understanding of these beliefs and instincts actually weakens their influence on my thoughts and behaviour. The process, if followed diligently and obsessively, will ultimately cause them to disappear completely. The idea, of course, being to eliminate the cause of my unhappiness, so that I can experience life at the optimum, now. RESPONDENT: I would assume that the meaning of the second paragraph is to challenge, by paying attention to and extending the scope of awareness rather than by challenging to desensitise. PETER: The answer is neither yes nor no. The purpose of the actualism method is firstly to stop avoiding, denying, suppressing or attempting to transcend one’s own ‘self’-centred instinctual survival passions. The process of becoming aware of these passions in action in your own psyche then leads to you being able to be ‘desensitised’ to these passions, as in ‘Reduce or eliminate the sensitivity of a person to a neurosis, phobia, etc.)’ Oxford Dictionary. You are then no longer prone to be paralysed by fear, overcome by anger, engulfed by nurture or driven by desire – you can become then virtually free of the instinctual passions – virtually happy and harmless. But the precursor to becoming desensitised is to remove the impediments to becoming sensitive to, and therefore aware of, one’s own fear, anger, nurture and desire in action in one’s own psyche. This first stage is only possible for those who have become free of being enamoured, awed and encumbered by spiritual/religious beliefs, values, ethics and morals – there are no short-cuts to Actual Freedom. RESPONDENT: As for the rest of your comments, I would have to agree with what your saying. The process of labelling feelings has been very difficult and for the most part I have unable to determine why. PETER: Speaking from experience, I found two major impediments to becoming aware of and labelling my feelings as they arose – my social identity with all my real-world Christian beliefs, morals and ethics and my layered-on-top Eastern spiritual identity with yet another set of beliefs, morals and ethics. Being born a male in a Christian society meant that I was taught to suppress my feelings and being born-again into Eastern religion meant denying my unwanted feelings and solely identifying with goodness and Godliness. What I soon discovered in actualism was that it is impossible to become aware of, let alone label, my fear and aggression while maintaining my spiritual identity of being a holier-than-thou goody-two-shoes. At one time I did consider that Krishnamurti-ism was a particularly onerous conditioning, as it does seem a very cerebral, detached, feeling-denying-and-suppressing philosophy-religion. But then again, the followers of Rajneeshism, a very emotive, devotional, feeling-expressing philosophy-religion, are seemingly equally unable to be aware of, label and be conscious of their own feelings of malice and sorrow. Whatever nature of spiritual/religious conditioning you have – be it Eastern, Western, Eastern layered on Western, repressive, expressive, devotional, Self-devotional, monotheistic or pantheistic – is irrelevant, because it is impossible to be aware of what is actually happening in the physical corporeal world if you have your head stuck in the clouds in the imaginary spirit-ual world. RESPONDENT: It seems as if they [feelings] have the ability to sink out of conscious view just at the right time and only persistence beyond belief has paid any dividends. Lately it is becoming more obvious just how clever ‘I’ am at managing to screw up the investigation and arrive at a state of doubt. This was combined with my determination to tackle the bad emotions to arrive at the good, which turned out to be really just another excuse for staying with the bad. What I have decided is to approach the bad (emotions) from the state of greater freedom; it is indeed a lot easier that way. Certain feeling/emotions can be put aside temporarily so as to get awareness operating better rather than just trying to be rational in a dark room. PETER: If I read you right, you have set yourself a goal in life – to feel good or feel excellent – and then you are investigating whatever stands in the way of your goal. If you started off feeling really good and suddenly noticed as you put your feet up at lunchtime that you have lost it and are feeling a bit low, then put a name on the feeling – say annoyed – and then trace back and remember when you came off feeling good and why. If it was something someone said, have a root around and discover why you became annoyed. What button was pushed – was it pride, was it guilt, was it your manliness, was it some moral view you held that was offended? When you have milked the event or incident for what it was worth and discovered a bit about yourself and what makes ‘you’ tick, then you get back to feeling good or you even crank up a bit of feeling excellent at having been aware of how you were experiencing that particular moment of being alive and had made some discoveries about yourself. It is impossible to tackle all the emotions at once, as you said, for this can only be an intellectual-only approach. By all means read and intellectually understand but it is the putting into practice of the method that produces actual change – and the putting into practice of the method means one step at a time. ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is a one step at a time approach – one feeling, one moment – right now. The other discovery you seem to have made is that is vitally important is to set yourself a benchmark for how you want to feel or experience this moment. If your benchmark is ‘normal’ or average or so-so, then running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ will mostly produce a meaningless answer of ‘normal’, average or so-so. By setting a benchmark of feeling good or feeling excellent, then mostly the question will produce at least a not-so-good or below the benchmark average. Then it is easier to be aware of your feeling at the time and much more likely to be able to name it. RESPONDENT: I find that an emotion approaching from the state of feeling good or great with the accompanying awareness is much easier to tackle. In other words I don’t try to solve all the emotions in order to be deserving of feeling good or great. What I now try to do is get in a position where I can better tackle them. PETER: I like what you have written, for many people seem to have difficulties in remembering a PCE to uphold as their benchmark whereas everyone can remember feeling excellent and thus be easily able to set this feeling as their benchmark. Perhaps it was a particularly carefree time, a particularly sensual experience, a time of particular joie de vie. Then you use this as your benchmark and aim to keep your head above water for as long as you can and when you become aware that you are sinking or have sunk, then you find out the cause and get back to as close to your benchmark as you can. Good on ya. It sounds as if your stubborn perseverance is bringing rewards. The rewards of actualism are beyond belief for they are down-to-earth and actual.
PETER: I do like these types of conversations where we get to explore a topic over several posts. I remember when I first came across Richard, I was somewhat in awe of his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Human Condition and of his considerable talents as a wordsmith. It seemed to me that all I needed to do was read his words or sit in his company and imbibe his knowledge and I would get ‘it’. Soon it struck me that I needed to put actualism into action for it to work. I further discovered I needed to understand what he was writing about both in my own experience and in my own words. I started to jot down notes and insights which then led me to tell my story about becoming virtually free of the Human Condition. In hindsight this was a fairly audacious thing to do because it was the first writing I had ever done and I was sticking my head above the parapet to be inevitably compared with someone who was actually free of the Human Condition, who was an expert in actualism and who wrote so well. What I found, however, was that the very process of having to document my experiences and understandings in my own words – not merely concoct experiences or parrot Richard’s words – was an invaluable method of learning to think for myself – something that is disparaged by our social conditioning and vilified in our spiritual conditioning. Recently Gary and I had an exchange about the topic of intelligence that we pursued for several posts in order to come to an understanding that the human species is the only animal capable of exhibiting what could meaningfully be called intelligence. Richard no doubt could have contributed a few lines that would have been authoritative, incisive and revealing, but the excellent thing about our conversation was that it was us talking about our own experiences, our own observations and coming to our own conclusions, firmly based on the facts of the situation. This was not a mutual masturbation by a couple of devoted Richardites, but an active investigation of the Human Condition. T’was good fun. To read or listen is one thing, to ponder and reflect is the next stage, to make sense of what is on offer – as in, come to your senses – is the next stage. And this is where mutual exchanges such as this, and questioning such as yours on this mailing list, are an invaluable aid in our making sense of what it is to be a human being. * PETER: So, on to your post – RESPONDENT: I have been mulling over this word ‘desensitise’, as it does seem to suggest a preventing of awareness, which seems a contradiction. It probably has more to do with triggers though, as in challenging the validity of a belief that triggers an instinctual response. Most systems that deal with neurosis, phobia, etc, seem to be only concerned with the ‘belief’ side of the problem and not instinctual triggers themselves, as apposed to the actualism desensitise, also includes challenging instinctual triggers. PETER: Let me start by saying that ‘desensitise’ is not a word I would normally use in describing the process of actualism because the word ‘sense’ has several common meanings and, as such, using the word desensitise can be somewhat confusing. When I likened actualism to desensitisation, I was referring solely to reducing or eliminating the emotional see-saw of savage and tender sensitivities that prevents awareness, inhibits common sense and stifles sensuousness. Spiritual conditioning greatly prizes and ennobles emotional sensitivity, per se, while blatantly ignoring the fact that spiritual so-called awareness and sensitivity is highly selective and selfish in that spiritualists ignore, deny and dis-identify from their own undesirable savage passions while exaggerating and identifying as being the tender and desirable passions. I am constantly amazed as to how unaware spiritually conditioned people actually are. The contradiction between how they think and feel they really are and how they act with each other and towards those who are ‘less-aware’ or believe in a different God is stunning, to say the least. But I think I see where you are coming from when you write –
Obviously the first step in becoming desensitised is to allow oneself to become aware of, or sensitive to, the full range of emotional experiences, as and when they happen. It is vitally important to experience a feeling as a feeling – to be able to feel and experience a feeling and emotion as it overcomes you. When you label the feeling you are having then you can take note of how it works. In the case of anger, feel the blood rushing to the head, listen to your words as they come tumbling out, feel where and how your body instantaneously tenses as the chemicals flush in, notice how long it takes for these chemicals to subside, and then notice the feeling that immediately follows your anger. And don’t forget to be aware of, or sensitive to, the effect you have had on others by feeling angry. This is awareness in action and when this process is undertaken often enough, diligently enough and deeply enough, it is then possible to become desensitised to emotions when they arise in you and others around you, as in, ‘reduce or eliminate the sensitivity ... to a neurosis or phobia, etc.’ RESPONDENT: It probably has more to do with triggers though, as in challenging the validity of a belief that triggers an instinctual response. Most systems that deal with neurosis, phobia, etc, seem to be only concerned with the ‘belief’ side of the problem and not instinctual triggers themselves, as apposed to the actualism desensitise, also includes challenging instinctual triggers. PETER: As you indicate, a grown-up awareness and a willingness to investigate inevitably leads to a curiosity as to what moral, ethic, value, belief or psittacism it is that triggers an automatic instinctual response in you. This awareness is in fact an awareness of your own social identity in action – in my case it was becoming aware of Peter the male, Peter the Australian, Peter the father, Peter the Christian-come-Rajneeshee, etc. I began to become aware of the feelings that arose when I was in female company and the feelings that arose when I was in male company. I began to notice the feelings that arose relative to the country I was born in, be it pride, patriotism, defensiveness or whatever. I began to notice the feelings that arose towards my family as distinct from others and how these feelings crippled intimacy. I began to notice how deep my moral and ethical conditioning ran – how many automatic good-bad, right-wrong judgements I made without even thinking about the subject or bothering to find out the facts, let alone take them into account. This is an exciting stage in the process because, as you increasingly become aware of your social ‘self’ in action, there will soon come a time when the whole stack of beliefs, morals, ethics, values, psittacisms and instinctual passions that constitute your identity will temporarily collapse and a PCE will occur. You will then be able to observe the insanity of a passion-fuelled Humanity from the outside, as it where, whilst free of any psychological-social or psychic-instinctual identity whatsoever. Then things really get cooking ... RESPONDENT: Desensitise would include the challenging of anything reducing the quality of this moment by ‘direct perception of triggers plus reflection about any missed triggers and an ongoing memory based consolidation of such’, which allows for an informed response, at least in the rational part of the brain. PETER: I am going to do a bit of cut and paste as I have discovered a piece in the glossary which relates to the issues of sense, sensitivity and desensitising. I wrote it at the time when I was actively digging into these issues in order to understand them and I seem to have covered much of the very ground we are now discussing.
I don’t know if that serves to throw some more light on the issue. What I wrote on
PETER: Nice to hear from you again. Before I reply to your post I would like to make a comment on something you wrote to Gary recently – RESPONDENT to Gary: If ‘I’ exists in any given moment which is a likely scenario, then it is likely that ‘I’ will be involved in any conscious decision and action. I think that is where the self has to agree to its own demise or even temporary absence. PETER: Spot on. Many people seem to have trouble with the proposition that ‘I’ can, consciously and with forethought, set upon a course of action that will lead to ‘my’ demise. And yet many of these same people have absolutely no problem with the traditional Eastern philosophy that ‘I’ can, consciously and with forethought, set upon a course of ‘right’ thinking, in the case of Buddhists and neo-Buddhists, that will lead to ‘my’ aggrandizement. It is the same ‘I’ who has the motivation, who does the work – it is simply a matter of a different direction, a different intent and a different result. It’s no small thing to get over this hurdle of supposedly ‘not-doing’ because it is a crippling legacy of one’s spiritual beliefs. All of the Masters, Sages, Gurus and Prophets have peddled the same nonsense that Transformation or Salvation is only achievable by the will or grace of God. This is despite the fact that their own attainment was achieved by their own stubborn efforts whereas it was only the final climatic event that resulted in an enduring Altered State of Consciousness that was not of their own doing – thus seemingly granted by the will or grace of God. The God-men propagate the idea of God’s will purely out of self-interest because they happen to be the God to whom you should surrender your will to. If you take believing and following the wisdom of God-men out of the business of freedom and if you take the belief in God out of the business of discovering what it is to be a human being, what you are left with is discovering the meaning of life by your own efforts – aided and abetted by the innate predisposition of this infinite and eternal physical universe to manifest purity and perfection. The search for freedom, peace and happiness really begins in earnest when one frees oneself from all spiritual/religious belief and this is why the sense of freedom is palpable when this stage occurs. Finally one is able to begin to stand on one’s own feet and walk taller in the world. RESPONDENT to Gary: Am ‘I’ running the question knowing full well that it means that ‘I’ will eventually expire? I would say the implications of that is realised more the longer the question is on going. I guess what I’m saying is that ‘I’ am probably initially, somewhat seduced into continuing with running the question. PETER: The bottom line seduction in actualism is ‘Do you want to be happy and harmless, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are?’ This quite simple, direct and uncomplicated proposition is seemingly incomprehensible to those who have been taught to believe that this is not possible under the proverbial Grand Scheme of Things. It takes a good deal of courage to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that underpins the belief in a GST – that human existence on earth is essentially a suffering existence and that this suffering is an essential part of the GST. The belief in a GST, in whatever form it takes, dooms human beings to remain collective puppets forever tethered by imaginary strings to some higher entity, energy or disembodied Intelligence. Once there is a crack in the door of this belief the question then becomes who or what is standing in the way of me becoming happy and harmless? This is where the seduction really comes in to play because running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ will not only provide the experiential answer to who or what is standing in the way of me becoming happy and harmless but it will simultaneously serve to begin to remove the impediments that prevent me from being happy and harmless. The astounding thing with this method is you can do it anytime, anywhere. You can do it first thing in the morning, whilst having breakfast, driving to work, at work, driving home, at home, while watching TV, last thing at night, while talking with people, while alone, whilst busy and whilst doing nothing. It’s totally free, it cost nothing, it requires no club membership, it requires no belief , trust faith or hope. It’s something you do by yourself, for yourself and for those around you, for a happy and harmless person is pleasurable company – even if some do find it a wee bit disconcerting. As you said, the longer the question is ongoing, the more you get to realize that there is only one ‘who’ who is standing in the road of me being happy and harmless. You start to get glimpses that this ‘who’ is not, as is commonly believed, someone else who is preventing me from being happy and harmless right now but it is actually ‘me’. Once you begin to really get a grip on the fact that it is only ‘me’ who is ruining my only chance of being happy in this moment, you simultaneously begin to break the ingrained habit of blaming others and being angry at others for seemingly causing me to be unhappy ... and by doing so you then begin to become more and more harmless towards others. And as you have more and more tangible success with running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ you soon discover that, despite ‘my’ fears, ‘I’ am happily agreeing to ‘my’ demise – which is what you referring to in your comment to Gary. * PETER to Alan: This broadening of one’s awareness – still triggered by asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is a win-win situation, for without it all of one’s gains in virtual freedom can be lost as one slips back into self-centredness and self-indulgence. Virtual freedom is by no means a permanent state, it is only a stepping stone on the path. To stop at any stage on the path is to risk losing all that one has gained from one’s hard work, but to push on requires a passionate dedication and obsession that can only be fuelled by altruism – the innate unselfishness that is programmed into all human beings as part of the survival instincts. When one takes the blind senselessness out of altruism then one’s ‘self’-sacrifice is made for peace on earth, not God or country. Actualism is about peace on earth – bringing an end to war, murder, rape, torture, domestic violence,
corruption and child abuse. RESPONDENT: I was a little surprised by this statement of yours. It seems to imply that after having effectively done away with social identity one can easily go back to having one. This seems somewhat of a contradiction with the idea that the world would be better if we all did no better than virtual freedom. It does seem to me that the sensibility gained along the way is somewhat permanent and one would not simply go back to their old ways particularly if one was in a state of virtual freedom. What was your experience of the time you spent holidaying in virtual freedom? Did you find any tendencies to revert back to your old ways? PETER: It is my experience that in virtual freedom one’s social identity and instinctual passionate identity is so reduced as to enable increased periods of ‘self’-less awareness or apperception to begin to operate. I am on record as saying that I regard the social identity as the easiest of the two aspects of identity to minimize and this is, I think, due to several reasons. My experience on the spiritual path did involve questioning some of my real-world values and ethics and some degree of ‘self’-awareness, even though my efforts were misguided and misdirected. I also had experienced the relative ease with which one can change one’s social identity from normal to spiritual, so the challenge of change, per se, was not foreign to me, even if that change meant eradication. The instinctual identity or ‘being’ is another kettle of fish however, for the core ‘me’ is sourced in and sustained by actual hormonal substances in the body and it is universally held as not only sacred but biologically inviolable. As a consequence, the strength of human instinctual passion is the very stuff of legends – most of it an appalling legacy of unspeakable human cruelty and unimaginable human suffering while the remainder is an endless kaleidoscope of escapist fantasies and bizarre dreamings or yearnings. This innate strength of one’s ‘being’ is not to be underestimated and an actualist needs to both understand and experience this strength if one is to ever become free of its clutches. The toughest of the passions to escape from are those that humanity holds most dear – the tender passions, and it is these bleeding heartstrings that can either suck you back into the real-world or catapult you into spiritual aggrandizement. To put it plainly, the desire to love or be loved is powerful stuff and when love fails to bring sufficient fulfilment in the real-world there is always the seductive lure of narcissism – Self-Love. Not that this is a problem in any way – if you revert to normal, there will always be some gain from being a little more sensible and a little less passion-driven and if you do end up Enlightened and it doesn’t sit well with you, you just work your way out of it as Richard did. Actualism is by no means a serious business, it is above all an adventure of exploration and discovery and in an ultimate sense nothing can go wrong. What I wrote to Gary was meant to be both a generalised warning and an encouragement, for to be virtually free of malice and sorrow is an unprecedented and salubrious condition in the annuals of human history, bar one – an actual freedom from the human condition in toto. To be forewarned is to be prepared and nothing can go astray, provided your intent is pure and your ‘self’-investigations are thorough and sincere. You may well be beginning to reap the benefits of actualism in becoming more happy and less malevolent and, if so, you will have a good inkling that there would indeed be an end to the endemic wars and senseless conflicts between human beings if actualism became the norm for the human condition. On a personal note, my ‘holidaying in virtual freedom’ is an ongoing holiday, so much so that I now know that I will never go back to grim reality, led alone be seduced into delusions of grandeur. It was not a cute throwaway line when I subtitled my journal ‘nothing left to lose’. I was at a crossroad in my life at the time, I had well-travelled the other roads and had learnt enough about what didn’t work and had suffered enough and dreamed enough to take heed of a really way-out proposition – ‘Do you want to be happy and harmless, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are?’ For me it was a serendipitous discovery, a priceless proposition, a golden opportunity – a seductive invitation to turn a life-long thirst into an actuality. As such, once started on the path, I never had any thoughts or feelings to revert back to my old ways at any time – I always burnt my boats behind me or, to put it another way, painted myself into a corner. I was always aware that my writing in particular was a way of doing both – that I would be not only agreeing to ‘my’ own demise but, by documenting it, I would leave my ‘self’ with no place to hide and no way to turn back. Just as a bit of an aside, but it something that has just come to mind. I always put harmless before happy in my priorities because I realized quite early on that it is impossible to be happy unless one is harmless. The realization that twigged me to this was when I finally stopped wanting Vineeto to change and I finally stopped doing battle with her – trying to get ‘my’ own way. In hindsight, putting being harmless before being happy was the beginning of altruism – the only passion capable of countering the innate narcissistic craving. The other issue about putting becoming harmless first is that fear and aggression are simply opposite sides of the same coin. The survival instincts are essentially attack and defence mechanisms – stand and fight or cut and run – or at their most basic in the animal world – ‘what can I eat ... what can eat me’. It is my experience that the way to eliminate fear is not to try to become fearless but to concentrate on becoming harmless. By progressively eliminating aggression towards others you take the very wind out of fear thereby simultaneously progressively eliminating fear of others as well. It takes extraordinary naiveté to do this and it is only possible if you have experienced the actually occurring benevolence that is the very nature of this astounding universe we humans live in. This direct experience of ‘self’-less purity and perfection is ultimately the beacon that will guide you. The words on the Actual Freedom Trust website, the journals and the screen saver are but a proposition – the proof of the pudding is one’s own PCE and this ‘self’-less experience then becomes one’s own touchstone. Provided ‘you’ don’t personally covert the experience as ‘my’ precious experience or crave it as an escape route for ‘me’ to get out of being here in the world as-it-is, you will merrily go about your business of instigating, then co-operating and finally agreeing to ‘my’ demise. I’ve wandered a bit again, but does that make things clearer? My aim in writing is always to encourage others to at least set a minimum goal of becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow but never to make light of the difficulties of such a pioneering ground-breaking endeavour. The magic on the path to freedom is that the rewards come initially from ‘my’ efforts, are then continued to be reaped with ‘my’ ongoing willing co-operation, and can only be made permanent by ‘my’ immolation. As such there are no real dangers in actualism – you can start or not start, you can take on a bit or you can take on the lot. This ensures you never get more than you can handle and also that you can stop whenever you really want to. It’s just that stopping can lead to a sense of failure which in turn can lead to feelings of resentment, blame, anger or sorrow and these undercurrent of feelings mean you will end up losing some of your hard-won gains – which is what I was alluding to in my comment to Gary. A good note to end on I think, before I go off on another loop.
PETER: G’day. RESPONDENT to Gary: Am ‘I’ running the question knowing full well that it means that ‘I’ will eventually expire? I would say the implications of that is realised more the longer the question is on going. I guess what I’m saying is that ‘I’ am probably initially, somewhat seduced into continuing with running the question. PETER: The bottom line seduction in actualism is ‘Do you want to be happy and harmless, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are?’ RESPONDENT: I would also add Altered States, PCEs, Peak Experiences and Expanded awareness.
* PETER: This quite simple, direct and uncomplicated proposition is seemingly incomprehensible to those who have been taught to believe that this is not possible under the proverbial Grand Scheme of Things. It takes a good deal of courage to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that underpins the belief in a GST – that human existence on earth is essentially a suffering existence and that this suffering is an essential part of the GST. The belief in a GST, in whatever form it takes, dooms human beings to remain collective puppets forever tethered by imaginary strings to some higher entity, energy or disembodied Intelligence. RESPONDENT: You should really talk to John Howard about GST, he’s into it in a big way... PETER: And the opposition political party has a plan to roll back the GST – Goods and Services Tax – i.e. nibble away at a bit. For an actualist who begins the process submerged in the Grand Scheme of Things a little nibbling is useful but only to the point where you can clearly see the whole charade and then you just leave it behind you and begin to see the world of people, things and events as it really is. The useful analogy of abandoning religious/spiritual belief is that of taking off your rose-coloured glasses. By simultaneously becoming more happy and harmless you also are literally taking off your grey-coloured glasses thus avoiding the trap of reverting to seeing the world as a grim and meaningless place. Then glimpses of the inexplicable physical magic of this world we humans actually live in increasingly occur and the path to freedom becomes indeed wondrous. Just a little anecdote about an event that happened the other day that may be useful as a simple down-to-earth description of actualism. I was talking with someone about the delights of being alive and the everyday abundance of simple pleasures. She said but that’s because I live in such a beautiful location. When she told me where she lived it sounded equally paradisiacal and I said surely you are happy where you are. She said ‘yes’ she was happy ‘but ...’. We chatted on a bit about her ‘but’ and finally she admitted it was not a big ‘but’ and that ‘yes’ she was happy. A minute later in our conversation about how good life was she again said ‘yes, but ...’. After this had gone on for a few more times the conversation ended because she didn’t like me dismissing her ‘buts’ so flippantly. It struck me that actualism is about getting rid of the ‘but’ in ‘I am happy, but ...’. When one asks oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and the answer is ‘I am happy, but ...’, it is the ‘but’ that needs investigating and eliminating. You then just tick them off the list until there are no ‘buts’ left. You can include ‘if’ and ‘when’ along with ‘but’ – anything that stands in the road of you being harmless and happy deserves your full and immediate attention. This immediate attentiveness can be a bit disconcerting at first when it happens because you can experience yourself becoming sad the moment you listen to a particular piece of music or in the whilst in middle of talking to someone. You can also become aware of the very moment when you begin to get frustrated or annoyed and this can be a bit disturbing if you are in the middle of a sentence or whatever. Often it is impossible to make sense of what is happening on the spot but by your very attentiveness you can nip it in the bud straight away and instantly get back to feeling good. If need be, you can mull the event over later at your leisure so as to root around in order to discover exactly how you have been conditioned and programmed to function. Once you get the knack of this instantaneous awareness, it is great fun. You know all this anyway, but sometimes some little incident occurs that I think is worth reporting and throwing in the ring because it shines a little more light on the down-to-earth process of actualism. And just a note that this incident has nothing to do with this woman personally – ‘yes, but ...’ is common to the human condition. I was going to leave it at that so as not to get too long winded but yet another meeting comes to mind that twigged me recently ... so I might as well abandon my attempts at brevity, yet again. I was having a casual discussion with a spiritual couple, which is a rarity these days, and they were talking about their money difficulties. They had recently received a substantial sum in inheritance and since then money had become their major worry in life. I said that I had determined very early on in life by observing wealthy people, as well as by personal experience, that being wealthy didn’t make people happy – au contraire. I went on to explain that when I realized that money was needed only to purchase the essentials for living, I then used whatever was left over to buy time to devote to finding out the meaning of life. She then asked me if I had found it and, looking for a quick one-liner, I said ‘being here’ and I slapped my thigh loudly so as to emphasise the physical here. Her partner, whom I knew to be a Buddhist, nodded wisely in agreement as if to say ‘enough said, we are in agreement, brother’ and then immediately went on to tell me about his worries with money, his complaints about this and that and his bitches about particular people and ‘society’ in general. What was startlingly clear was that he was complaining and bitching about being here. I didn’t pursue the matter because words are wasted on a committed Buddhist whose being here involves sitting in meditation, shutting out both the real world and the sensory world and going ‘there’ – somewhere else other than the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. It is impossible to talk sense to someone who insists that the meaning of life on earth is to be found by going somewhere else, as in cutting oneself off from the sensory world and retreating into one’s inner psychic world. He didn’t even have any ‘buts’ about being happy because for him it was clear cut that happiness and fulfilment could only be had by going ‘there’ – to whatever imaginary world he went to when he was going inside while sitting alone in the lotus position. I might leave it at that for tonight, No 3 and send this off as a first part. Only a few years ago I was full-on into building and would like nothing better than getting in to laying a timber floor or cladding a wall – doing it as well as I could. Now I seem to have the same thing with two fingers on the keyboard and there is nothing finer than talking about, and bringing about, peace on earth. Sometimes when I sit back and reflect upon what is actually happening with the setting up of The Actual Freedom Trust website and with the discussions on this mailing list, the sheer enormity of it is beyond comprehension. It is common to talk of human development going through certain stages such as the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and currently we are in what has been called, amongst other things, the information revolution. To think that the next revolution will see an end to animosity, duplicity, resentment, unhappiness and despair and herald an ongoing era of sensitivity, sincerity, cooperation and joie de vive – in short peace on earth... It is almost unimaginable except for the fact that the very beginnings of this era are happening right now.
PETER: Once you begin to really get a grip on the fact that it is only ‘me’ who is ruining my only chance of being happy in this moment, you simultaneously begin to break the ingrained habit of blaming others and being angry at others for seemingly causing me to be unhappy ... and by doing so you then begin to become more and more harmless towards others. And as you have more and more tangible success with running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ you soon discover that, despite ‘my’ fears, ‘I’ am happily agreeing to ‘my’ demise – which is what you referring to in your comment to Gary. RESPONDENT: I recall that when I first start running the question some 2 years ago (I think) there was a great objection to running the question. Now it is more than not, an immediate reward with the exception of the occasional guilty feeling when I realize that I had dropped the ball for some time. PETER: Guilt I know well. I was amazed to find, when I started to abandon my spiritual beliefs, morals and ethics, that they had simply been layered over my Christian beliefs, morals and ethics. And guilt belongs in the stick part of the carrot and stick in the Christian religion – typified by the pathos-ridden fairy story of the Son of God dying for our sins. Personally I didn’t worry about guilt too much because by becoming aware that I had dropped the ball for sometime I was instantly back in business again, which was clearly a success and not a failure. * PETER: It is my experience that in virtual freedom one’s social identity and instinctual passionate identity is so reduced as to enable increased periods of ‘self’-less awareness or apperception to begin to operate. I am on record as saying that I regard the social identity as the easiest of the two aspects of identity to minimize and this is, I think, due to several reasons. My experience on the spiritual path did involve questioning some of my real-world values and ethics and some degree of ‘self’-awareness, even though my efforts were misguided and misdirected. I also had experienced the relative ease with which one can change one’s social identity from normal to spiritual, so the challenge of change, per se, was not foreign to me, even if that change meant eradication. RESPONDENT: I have found reducing the social identity somewhat more difficult and I would say the roots of this would be a combination of deep resentment and a pacifist’s approach to dealing with issues, which effectively blocked out any attempts at investigation. PETER: I have just watched a press conference reporting in minute detail the execution of the man who planted the bomb that killed 168 people in a government building in Okalahoma, U.S.A. several years ago. Apart from the ghoulish fascination of the media, the aspect that I found most interesting was that the apparent motive for his horrendous act was a deep resentment at ‘the government’ because he blamed ‘them’ for the deaths at the Waco siege. Every human feels a deep resentment at having to be here on the planet and while most manage to keep it under control, others find socially acceptable outlets such as protest movements, demonstrations, political causes, social change movements, etc. Some people suppress their resentment by feeling grateful towards their own personal God or Existence while others sublimate their resentment by practicing acceptance and becoming dissociated from being here on the planet as in Eastern religion/philosophy. Most countries institutionalize resentment in their social structure by having an adversarial system of government complete with ‘opposition’ parties. On a tribal level resentment often turns into full-scale war wherein if a man attacked ‘the enemy’ and killed 178 people including civilians he would be given a medal and not a lethal injection. Be it on an individual level or a tribal level, resentment does nothing but fuel anger, revenge and violence or sadness, despair and suicide. For an actualist the only sensible thing to do is leave resentment well and truly behind in the dust, where it belongs, as you steadily move from feeling good to feeling excellent to the stage of being virtually free of any malicious or sorrowful feelings. In virtual freedom resentment plays no part in your life whatsoever. As for ‘a pacifists approach to dealing with issues’, I had the exactly the same approach when I was normal. I was definitely what was known as a wimp, I would rather run than fight and would rather avoid than confront. But I eventually became aware of the fact that suppression does not work 100% of the time – I was still resentful underneath and anger would occasionally bubble up to the surface, despite my being a goody two shoes. This awareness and acknowledgement of my suppressed resentment and anger compelled me to abandon my hypocritical pacifism because I saw clearly that, regardless of ‘my’ morally superior position and in spite of ‘my’ idealistic pacifism, ‘I’ was, deep down, as resentful as everybody else and, when push came to shove, as quick to anger as anyone else. You can readily see an analogous situation to the socializing system within the human condition simply by observing domestic animals. You can tame and pacify a cat by looking after it – giving it food, shelter, and protection – and in return the cat will play its part by occasionally rubbing up against you and letting you get close enough to stroke it. And yet, despite this socialization process and the animal’s apparent tameness, when a competitor or predator invades its territory, the same tame cat instantly reverts to being a savage fighting animal. If you then turn the same cat loose in the bush it quickly loses all its tame behaviour and reverts to being an instinctual feral hunter again. The same behaviour pattern is readily apparent in the human animal – taming humans to be good citizens by a process of reward and punishment doesn’t ultimately work because, when a competitor or predator invades their territory, humans can very quickly become inexplicably vicious. So poorly does the taming process work in the human species that mayhem and anarchy would be the norm if it were not for the fact that we have armed policemen patrolling the streets. Law and order in the human species is ultimately only maintained at the point of a gun. Laws, policeman and prisons are needed to punish those who break the laws of the tribe and lawyers and courts are needed to settle personal arguments that threaten to get out of control. Every country needs an army of men on standby in case they are needed to fight a war against other countries. Counties are forced to enter into treaties and alliances between themselves in order to form power blocks to prevent age-old wounds and resentments from being paid back in kind. Whenever a dominant power group of countries emerge, they then take it upon themselves to be the world’s police force – thereby lording it over other less powerful countries. When war does break out, as it does all too frequently, rules for warfare have been developed so as to try and limit the natural tendencies of bloodlust and revenge to turn into unspeakable acts of torture and genocide. This is the condition of the human species we all find ourselves born into and it is such a horrific condition that turning away and burying one’s head in the sand is the only way to cope. Some seek a feeling of freedom by totally dissociating from the very real horrors of the human world, while others pray to mythical Gods for forgiveness for feeling evil thoughts – the equivalent of sticking one’s head in the clouds. I remember feeling utterly confused one day when I realized that I had spent half my adult life being normal and half my adult life being spiritual and nothing made sense – there seemed to be no solution within the human condition. A period of contemplation on the nature of the human condition in toto, combined with the beginnings of questioning ‘my’ personal beliefs, triggered a pure consciousness experience where I was able to clearly see the human condition from the outside as it were. I’ll repost the description of this PCE as it is spot-on relevant to the process of actualism –
Doing something about one’s own malice and sorrow beats head-in-the-sand pacifism by a country mile. * PETER: This innate strength of one’s ‘being’ is not to be underestimated and an actualist needs to both understand and experience this strength if one is to ever become free of its clutches. The toughest of the passions to escape from are those that humanity holds most dear – the tender passions, and it is these bleeding heartstrings that can either suck you back into the real-world or catapult you into spiritual aggrandizement. To put it plainly, the desire to love or be loved is powerful stuff and when love fails to bring sufficient fulfilment in the real-world there is always the seductive lure of narcissism – Self-Love. RESPONDENT: I have had enough run-ins with the instincts to know what you mean. Even contemplating tackling them can put you on shaky ground. It’s not just a thought or idea, it’s a deep seated process which initially completely defies any in-depth awareness. PETER: I had many experiences and realizations on the path – they are par for the course – but they always occurred perfectly in time on time, never too soon and never too late. Once you make the effort to get the process really rolling it gathers its own momentum as one’s attentiveness does its job – bringing previously hidden issues to the surface one by one. As this momentum gathers, the dare is not to put your foot on the brakes, as it were. The next issue to tackle is always easy to spot – it is always the one that is literally in your face, in this moment. As such, it has to be acted on immediately – there is no time for rehearsals in being here, doing what is happening. Actualism is about throwing out the script that your parents and peers wrote as to ‘who’ you should be and how you should act and then breaking free of one’s instinctual animal heritage that is the very cause of one’s malicious and sorrowful feelings and actions. Thus the fear that arises in the process of actualism can be likened to stage fright – or feeling like you are on shaky ground – as you begin to feel the thrill of the business of being here without a script. I remember many a time being concerned that I was ‘losing the plot’ but it would soon disappear when I remembered that the plot within the human condition includes resentment, frustration, anger, violence, avarice, greed, corruption, loneliness, sadness, despair and suicide. Then I remembered that my aim in actualism was to break free of the straightjacket of living a pre-scripted life in a pre-determined manner – in short, I wanted to lose the plot.
PETER: To follow this thread a bit further – Sometimes when I sit back and reflect upon what is actually happening with the setting up of The Actual Freedom Trust website and with the discussions on this mailing list, the sheer enormity of it is beyond comprehension. It is common to talk of human development going through certain stages such as the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and currently we are in what has been called, amongst other things, the information revolution. To think that the next revolution will see an end to animosity, duplicity, resentment, unhappiness and despair and herald an ongoing era of sensitivity, sincerity, cooperation and joie de vive in short peace on earth& It is almost unimaginable except for the fact that the very beginnings of this era are happening right now. RESPONDENT: Initially is was hard to imagine that no one else had achieved actual freedom before, perhaps it’s more to do with the demands on instincts up till the last few hundred years. PETER: I think this is good a part of the reason but not the whole reason. I definitely have lived in a time of unprecedented safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure the likes of which would have been inconceivable to my father’s generation and which is still inaccessible to many on the planet. As such I have been able to pursue freedom rather than struggle for survival but this has also been the case for many, many people throughout history, but all have either bowed down or buckled under to tradition. The East has a very ancient tradition of supporting gurus, teachers, monks and sannyasins by the millions so that they are free to contemplate upon the meaning of human existence on earth and stuff-all of practical use to humanity has resulted. In China a stifling social, ethical and moral belief system is the result, in Japan a regimented warrior-religion of such life-negating ferocity that ritual suicide is lauded and in India there is a mind-boggling potpourri of beliefs whose only commonality is a total negation of thinking per se. In the West a similarly privileged class squandered their opportunity to find a way to personal freedom and global peace on earth by a combination of intellectual navel-gazing and a fascination with mysticism which also managed to infuse the physical sciences with a whole meta-physical bent – the cunningly named theoretical sciences. A few brave attempts have been made to break free of the power of the church and seductive lure of spiritual belief but threat of ostracization, persecution and even imprisonment, torture and death served to silence any sensible debate, let alone individual outbreaks of freedom from spirituality. However the prime reason that no-one up until now has discovered actual freedom is that the instinctual lure of narcissism is far, far more attractive than a nothing-in-it-for-‘me’ extinction. And the only reason it was discovered when it was, was that the ultimate state of narcissism, known as Enlightenment, did not sit at all well with Richard. After all, he was a country boy from the farm who knew nothing at all about Eastern Spirituality in his early life. When his personal search for freedom catapulted him into in a glorious altered state of consciousness, he naturally thought he had discovered the ultimate state of human existence. As he talked to people about his state, he gradually realized that he was in a state commonly known as Enlightenment in the East. Although he makes no bones about the Glory of living in an altered state of consciousness –and there can be nothing more glorious than swanning along feeling like you are God – he remained suss of the ‘other-worldly’ aspects such as feeling immortal, feeling omnipresent and omnipotent and the fact that the ‘worldly’ passions of fear, anger, nurture and desire were still present. It took him 11 more years of ‘Self’-investigation, running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ before this Altar-Ego collapsed, thereby finally completing the process of ‘self’-immolation. RESPONDENT: I agree with the enormity of actual freedom and am looking forward to seeing the next event of self -immolation as it goes one step closer to proving actual freedom as being something available to virtually anyone willing to go the distance. PETER: I termed it ‘willing to stick my head above the parapet’ which has proved an apt description given the pie-throwing reaction of most of the several hundred people who so far know of existence of actualism. RESPONDENT: I am also toying with the idea of a survey of each participant in AF and their time spent versus results gained given the different backgrounds and ongoing conditions so as to provide some researched results for those considering AF. This could be made even more interesting by including any disabilities (usually used as an excuse) so that it can be seen that an incremental improvement is available to any who persist with AF. (AF as used here means Actual Freedom methodology). PETER: That is exactly why I wrote my journal and have rarely stopped writing since then, and that is also why Vineeto writes. It’s part of sticking your hand up to be counted. Writing on this list is a direct and simple way of reporting success, investigating beliefs, sharing information, discussing issues and following threads. This way you don’t need to do a survey because the original accounts are available for anyone else who may be interested. RESPONDENT: Just on another note I would like to suggest that any participants of AF try to avoid any physical condition (ie over sleeping, over exertion, etc) which might contribute towards a reduced ability to be self-aware. Toughing it out physically usually doesn’t really help AF much. Of course I have not included all the psychosomatic causes. If these adverse physical influences can be reduced then the effectiveness of AF can be increased somewhat. PETER: I think I know what you are getting at but self-awareness is not a precious thing to be cultivated within a cocoon of one’s own making. Being actively and thoroughly involved in the business of living in the market place is what tests an actualist. During the whole period of investigation that I described in my journal, I moved houses several times, I began living with a woman, had a very active sex life, designed, supervised and built a house and spent several hours a day listening to what Richard had to say about actualism and actual freedom. Being careful, as in being considerate for your own safety and of those around you, and keeping one’s hands in one’s pockets, as in avoiding acting on any extreme passions that may be stirred is certainly essential, but the dare in actualism is to start living fully for the first time in your life and not to play safe any more. At the risk of flogging a point, ‘self’-awareness is not about keeping the lid on your feelings, it is about reducing the debilitating effects of the extremes of malice and sorrow and cranking up the felicitous feelings – feeling good, feeling really good, feeling excellent, tipping over into amazement and wonder at doing this business of being alive, while being aware that we are alive, on this paradisiacal planet. It’s about cranking up an unconditional joie de vie – i.e. not conditional on the circumstances of your life right now, on changing the world as-it-is or changing people as-they-are. This cranking up feeling good about being here can often feel like trying to get out of a vat of thick glue – the glue being one’s social/ religious/ spiritual conditioning and one’s instinctual bondage to the rest of Humanity. The trick is first to become free of feeling you are stuck in a glue pot, which is to get yourself to the stage where you are virtually unencumbered by malice and sorrow. The price one pays for becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow is that one needs to become virtually free of one’s social identity and all that this implies. Cherished emotional bonds and empathetic relationships will be sacrificed together with all loyalties, allegiances, dependencies, bondages, etc. Aside from the practical and sensible family responsibilities which are usually easily met and prudently obeying the laws of the land, one needs to aim at becoming autonomous rather than remain shackled to being ‘who’ other people wanted you to be or still want you to be. This becoming autonomous can seem a daunting task but the rewards of relieving those closest from having to suffer the burden of ‘me’ and ‘my’ moods and ‘my’ resentment is palpable, as is the feeling of being free from the social compulsion of having to think, feel and act exactly as one’s peers do. It’s that Yippee stage that moved me to write my journal to trumpet the benefits of actualism and the joys of virtual freedom in particular. Having said all that, in my usual long-winded style, I do appreciate your comments for they are a timely warning. Actualism, by its very nature, is a tumultuous process and consideration for others and one’s own safety should always be paramount – which is where common sense comes in. ‘Keep your hands in your pockets and drive safely’ would be my advice based on experience to date but I would add ‘avoid seriousness, avoid playing safe and go for gay abandon’ as well while I am at it. It’s a matter of keeping your feet firmly on the ground and flying at the same time, which takes a bit of getting used to at first. Richard terms it as living at ‘the cutting edge of reality’ and I have described it as always being ‘right at the front of the stage’, as opposed to sitting in the audience, hiding in the chorus line or wafting around in the fly gallery with the Gods and Goddesses. Nice to chat with you again
PETER: To continue on with our discussion – RESPONDENT: Just on another note I would like to suggest that any participants of AF try to avoid any physical condition (i.e. over sleeping, over exertion, etc), which might contribute towards a reduced ability to be self-aware. Toughing it out physically usually doesn’t really help AF much. Of course I have not included all the psychosomatic causes. If these adverse physical influences can be reduced then the effectiveness of AF can be increased somewhat. PETER: I think I know what you are getting at but self-awareness is not a precious thing to be cultivated within a cocoon of one s own making. Being careful, as in being considerate for your own safety and of those around you, and keeping one s hands in one s pockets, as in avoiding acting on any extreme passions that may be stirred is certainly essential, but the dare in actualism is to start living fully for the first time in your life and not to play safe any more. <Snip> RESPONDENT: Just to make sure that you do know what I’m getting at. I was talking about the physical disability of being tired or say fatigued and its effect on the ability to be aware. When I am tired the mind is dull and lacks the ability to discern the tricks of ‘me’. PETER: It may be appropriate that I am writing this now because I walked down town for a haircut today, had breakfast about 12 in a café and Vineeto picked me up and we went shopping at the local nursery for some plants. We wandered up and down the pathways oohing an aahing as the selection available was almost as extensive as range of foods available from the local supermarket. We took our time purely for the delight of seeing a mere fraction of the extraordinary ways that life has manifest itself on this bountiful planet. Eventually we had a box full of the plants that took our fancy and tootled off home where we immediately launched into several hours of gardening. Now, in the early evening I am typing a post to you with that delicious sensation of tiredness after physical exercise and the satisfaction of getting one’s hands in the soil. The answer to the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ right now is deliciously tired and immensely satisfied with life. We have closed the curtains in the flat and are in what we call ‘night mode’, the lights are soft, two keyboards are clicking away and there is still the remnants of coffee taste in my mouth – the linger of coffee, as it is called. A wonderfully descriptive word, linger... Just to pass on a little bit of information and experience, it is useful to make a distinction between real-world alertness or on-guardness, spiritual awareness and contemplative attentiveness. I remember sometimes meeting Richard and he was just waking up from an afternoon nap or was just idly lazing around or gazing at nothing in particular and it was obvious that he was not being alert in the wide awake, taking particular notice, thinking something in particular sense that is usually meant by being alert. He called it ‘mind in neutral’ – a time of not thinking anything in particular, and not seeing anything in particular that you put a label on or a name to – a ‘gazing with soft eyes’, to use another Richard term. I came to understand that these times of utter ease and peacefulness, of a softy delicious awareness of the delight of being alive as a flesh and blood body can be entry points into being aware of the utter purity and perfection of the actual world we live in. This is when a bare awareness can happen, not a ‘me’ being aware or ‘me’ being alert. If I can remember back to the start of ‘my’ process, it often felt as though I was on alert all of the time as issue after issue or feeling after feeling would come rushing in. It was sometimes very chaotic, most often bewildering and certainly disorienting in the early months. But often out of this very chaos came melt-downs, as it were, where PCEs would sometimes happen out of the intensity of my discoveries or explorations. I have described this initial period of actualism as becoming ‘self’ obsessed – my attentiveness was solely focussed on what ‘I’ was experiencing – whilst carefully driving, banging in nails or doing whatever other things I was doing at the time. If I could make a distinction that may be useful – I was alert to what I was doing but I was increasingly becoming aware of how I was experiencing this moment. I know this could be labelled as nitpicking, to use a term that has crept into the list lately, but there is a distinction that is useful to discuss. What I came to discover was that sometimes the answer to the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ might well be that I am deliciously tired and immensely satisfied with life ... in fact, I am feeling excellent right now. What I would do in the early days was then start worrying that nothing was happening or I started to miss the excitement of another discovery and ‘I’ would then be back in full control. As such, it took a while to get the knack of stretching out my times of feeling good because I was constantly on the alert for feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, sadness, guilt, etc. – which is exactly as it should be in the early days of actualism. But if there is nothing going on as it were, no particular burning issue that you are avoiding or that has just arisen and needs looking at, then it is as equally important to begin to revel in feeling good, to start to wallow in feeling excellent in order to switch over to marvelling at the wonder of it all. The next thing to investigate will come wandering in the door by itself, or may even become apparent from reading on the website or on this mailing list. Whatever pulls you away from feeling good, have a good look at, note it down, and get back to feeling good as soon as possible. Later, when you have time for a bit of contemplating, you can mull it over to get to the bottom of it. This way you don’t repress your feelings nor do you express them, you become aware of them in action and then you conduct your own investigation, as only you can. * PETER: I just wanted to squeeze a little anecdote in, if I may. Sometimes little incidents happen that serve to encapsulate the human condition so succinctly that I want to tell the story just in case it is of use to someone else’s seeing of the world as it actually is. Recently I mentioned that I watched a TV show about the execution of the man who planted a bomb that killed 168 people in Okalahoma, U.S. As part of the media hype at the time, the policeman who arrested the bomber was interviewed. He had seen the man driving a car without a rear number plate and had pulled him over. As the man got out of the car the policeman noticed a bulge in his coat which he took to be a gun. His suspicion aroused, he subsequently searched the vehicle and, as I remember it, found incriminating evidence which led to the man’s arrest, prosecution and eventual execution. The policeman said to the interviewing reporter that he felt it was ‘God’s will’ that made him notice the bulge, for if it were not for that he would have warned the man about the license plate and let him go on his way. As I listened I was incredulous that this policeman could say it was ‘God’s will’ that the bomber was caught yet he was blind to the fact that it must also have been ‘God’s will’ that 168 people, including pre-school infants, were killed in the first place. It is amazing that human beings firstly invent an omnipotent God who is not only responsible for good but also for evil and then proceed to feel either humble gratitude or debilitating guilt. At the risk of flogging a point, another incident serves to round off the story neatly, which is something long-winded writers particularly enjoy. Last week I met with a locally-based travelling spiritual salesman regarding some potential drawing work and he informed me that he was looking to make some changes to his house as he was in the process of separating from his third wife – his seventh partner. He chatted on about all his problems with money, kids, ex-wives and such and ended by shrugging his shoulders and saying – this is what Existence has provided. He asked me how my relationship was and I said perfect, but I didn’t bother to elaborate because he saw his problems as either someone else’s fault or as part of God’s plan to remind him personally that earthly life is but Maya. The belief in God is so insidious that it permeates every aspect of the human condition. If people haven’t got a God they invariably feel that their life is meaningless, if they don’t like their parents’ God they invariably devote their latter years searching for a God they like, if they don’t like any of the human-type Gods they invariably revert to making things or animals or the planet itself into Gods. Love them or hate them, praise them or damn them, pursue them or flee from them – these imaginary little critters or ethereal spirits or father figures or mother figures or departed souls or guiding lights or supreme intelligences or manifestations of goodness or God-realized beings so dominate the human psyche that it is nigh on impossible for human beings to clearly see the world as it actually is. It’s so good to be free of the God trap and to be aware that either believing in an imaginary God, in whatever form and by whatever name, or riling against an imaginary God, in whatever form and by whatever name, is patently nonsensical ... and an utter waste of time that could be better be spent becoming happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Nice to chat with you again.
PETER: What I would do in the early days was then start worrying that nothing was happening or I started to miss the excitement of another discovery and ‘I’ would then be back in full control. RESPONDENT: Yes I can relate to this. Sometimes the only reason I can see for not being happy is that I’m not doing enough to be happy or that somehow I’m happy because I’ve cheated. PETER: The other night I was laying on the couch doing nothing and it struck me that I was happy for no particular reason at all. I was simply happy to be aware of being here. I reflected that I was well content with all the effort I had made to remove the impediments that stood in the way of this unconditional happiness and how ruthlessly simple the actualism method is in removing these impediments. One simply needs to become aware of when one is not happy and ask oneself why? Find out the reason, question whether it is really worthwhile being unhappy for and if not, chuck it overboard. Similarly, if you find yourself being annoyed or angry – ask yourself why? Find out the reason, question whether it is really worthwhile being unhappy for and if not, chuck it overboard. As for cheating, I remember feeling as though I was a traitor because I wasn’t playing the game that everyone else was – I wasn’t fighting for my rights, I wasn’t blaming others, I wasn’t joining in conversations about how tough life was, I wasn’t sympathising when someone else was complaining about something or someone. At these times it was often as though I had stepped out the door temporarily and was able to see the vast scheme of things – being able to see the non-sense of human beings still wilfully engaged in a psychological and psychic, grim instinctual battle for survival. * PETER: As such, it took a while to get the knack of stretching out my times of feeling good because I was constantly on the alert for feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, sadness, guilt, etc. – which is exactly as it should be in the early days of actualism. But if there is nothing going on as it were, no particular burning issue that you are avoiding or that has just arisen and needs looking at, then it is as equally important to begin to revel in feeling good, to start to wallow in feeling excellent in order to switch over to marvelling at the wonder of it all. The next thing to investigate will come wandering in the door by itself, or may even become apparent from reading on the website or on this mailing list. Whatever pulls you away from feeling good, have a good look at, note it down, and get back to feeling good as soon as possible. Later, when you have time for a bit of contemplating, you can mull it over to get to the bottom of it. This way you don’t repress your feelings, nor do you express them, you become aware of them in action and then you conduct your own investigation, as only you can. RESPONDENT: Aye, ‘tis good advice. PETER: It is always a particular pleasure to write to someone who is genuinely interested in becoming free of malice and sorrow. It is no small thing to be a pioneer in finally ridding this fair planet of the animosity and despair that has exemplified the human condition since time immemorial. In this emerging post-spiritual era, actualism is the only game to play in town.
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