PETER: Hi Gary,

I will post fairly large sections of the previous post as it provides good information for anyone interested in doing the business of actualism.

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PETER: The first thing is the business of finding out the facts of the human condition we find ourselves born in to, as opposed to what we have been told is the truth about the human condition. What we have come to believe and commonly accept as the truth is what has been passed on to each and every human being from their parents and peers ... who got it from their parents and peers ... who got it from their parents and peers ... stretching back into the dark mists of time. Our bondage to the human condition can be summed up as –

[Peter]: ‘This is the way it is, because this is the way it is, because this is the way it has always been and this is the way it will always be’. [endquote].

In order to become free of the human condition it is essential to laboriously crack through these shackles – the beliefs, morals, ethics, values, viewpoints and psittacisms that bond humans to a life of essential suffering and heart-wrenching misery. The easiest and most direct method to do this is to read the Actual Freedom Trust website and confirm what is written by your own life experiences and your own investigations. The method I used to confirm that what Richard was saying about the human condition was factual and sensible was to read, watch TV and browse the internet for further information. This process of finding the facts does involve a fair bit of work and investigation. One needs to check many sources, look for contradictions, be very wary of the source of the material and the bias of the authors or presenters, seek out the data behind the conclusions others are making, etc. Initially I ran a little game whereby I simply assumed that I, and everyone else, had got it wrong and looked for why and where – this way the investigation became exciting and thrilling – not daunting and fearful. Pretty soon I was able to confirm that I and everyone else had got it wrong – I had been searching for freedom and meaning 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

GARY: I would say it takes considerable work and investigation to uncover the facts of a situation, but the rewards are immediate, tangible, and lasting. In this investigative work, everything is up for scrutiny and one cannot rely on the ‘time-honoured’ truisms and psittacisms that one usually falls back on to explain what is happening in life.

PETER: As I re-read what I wrote to you I was reminded of something you wrote recently –

[Gary]: This desperation that I talk about comes out of my life experience. Everyone I know has been affected by war and violence. Nobody has escaped the carnage, at least nobody I know. I myself have been both victimized by violence and prone to violence myself in the past. Gary to Peter, 31.12.2000

I don’t want to leave the impression that dispelling belief and unearthing facts is an intellectual exercise based upon reading and discerning what others have discovered. The quickest, most direct and most effective way of determining what is fact, i.e. what works and what doesn’t work, is by your own life experiences. By the time mid-life comes around, most people have had sufficient life experiences to already know what doesn’t work and only if there is still some doubt about a particularly sticky issue do you need to investigate further. As an example, I needed only to draw on my own life experiences and my observations of others around me to know that love does not work, and never can work, to negate malice or sorrow. This is why I wrote my journal in the style I did, including many examples of my life experiences and my inevitable failures to find peace and happiness, both in the real world and the spiritual world.

The other kind of investigation is by deliberately setting out to make sense of a vexing issue, as we did in our recent conversation about intelligence vs. instinctual passion. In this type of investigation you root around and dig up all the information, data and observations you can and balance those against the currently accepted viewpoints and beliefs that others have about the subject, and then you eventually come to find an answer – to come to an understanding of the facts of the situation. Vineeto and I have spent many, many hours mulling over issues relevant to the human condition with no disagreement or disharmony simply because we were searching for the facts – something that is clearly evident, obvious and indisputable.

GARY: At one stage in my investigations, I think I ran square up against a fearful and daunting aspect of the work, and it was the fear itself that needed to be examined for what it is. I needed to examine thoroughly what this fear was made of, what its’ origins were, and what function it served. I cannot say that I have totally surmounted the fear or that I am totally free of it, but I have noticed that it has greatly diminished. The fear itself is part and parcel of the beliefs that have been taught to one or that one has imbibed from one’s parents, one’s culture, etc – the fear reinforces and demands obedience to Humanity’s trusted beliefs, it reinforces the notion that ‘This is the way it is, because this is the way it is...’, etc.

PETER: What you are saying accords with my own experiences about the feeling of fear. Fear most often manifests itself as differing forms of imaginary dire consequences at different stages in the process of actualism and it may be useful if I attempt to label these fears, based on my experience with the process.

The first fear I encountered was when I came across actualism and began to understand its implications. Again I’ll post a bit from my Journal simply because, being closer to the events, it’s fresher writing–

[Peter]: ‘The fear that I faced at the start of this process of ridding myself of a psychic entity, and on the way through was psychic fear – fear that was present in my psyche. It is the very same fear that ruled my every action and thought for most of my life. The: ‘what does that person think of me?’, ‘what am I going to do next?’, ‘what if something goes wrong?’ – the instinctual passion of fear I was born with. The fear we transform into doubt, and more doubt. I remember calling it the ‘what if’ syndrome at some point. In the face of it the most usual reaction is to freeze – not do anything.

I saw it as a bit like when you drive along a country road and a rabbit appears on the road. Blinded by the headlights he freezes, and splat – dead rabbit. The only difference for me when I met Richard was that wobbling around in doubt or freezing in fear meant simply more of the same – prolonging my ‘normal’ life of suffering and confusion. The suffering of knowing that something was seriously wrong in my life but staunchly denying it out of pride, or hoping that the latest guru or belief would work, when deep inside I had already seen it wouldn’t work. The confusion I was in at the time was because I had seen ‘behind the curtain’ of the spiritual world. I had seen the Gurus for what they were, and I had started to see that it was all the same ‘old time religion’. The facts didn’t gel with the beliefs and there was a certain discord; a ‘Something’s not quite right’ – not that I knew what it was at the time.

So when I met Richard I found myself saying ‘I’ll give this a try, and I’ll make it the most important thing in my life’. That, as I look back, was my innate intelligence operating – the ‘if it doesn’t work, throw it out and find something that does’ or ‘don’t just freeze in the headlights’. Common sense, really. It wasn’t courage – it was common sense.’ Peter’s Journal, Fear

The next fear I encountered was the fear associated when actively dismantling my social identity. The fear was that if I no longer believed what everyone else believed, if I no longer valued society’s morals and ethics, if I no longer thought and felt how I had been taught to think and feel, then I would certainly be punished and ostracized. What I soon came to realize was that the moment I stopped trying to change other people by pointing out where their beliefs were wrong, no longer did I provoke defensive or offensive responses from others – no longer did I feel punished or ostracized. This also meant that increasingly I had little in common with my friends because I no longer shared their beliefs and also I no longer empathized with their misery and I no longer supported their malice towards others. Very quickly my former friendships mutually dissolved, as there was no longer any emotional bond or need for support on my part. As my social identity dissolved so did my fears of the dire consequences of punishment and ostracization.

There is also an atavistic component to this fear. Atavistic fears are those that are passed on over countless generations either as spoken or unspoken taboos that hint at horrific consequences should one dare to stray too far from the accepted norm. Many of these relate to retribution and revenge by the Gods and spirits or horrendous acts of torture wrought by the shamans and priests for heretics and those possessed by evil spirits. Often these fears would occur in dreams at night-time or when stirring the wrath of some God-man on a mailing list. Provided you keep your wits about you and don’t goad a fanatic, investigating these fears can be great fun because these fears are eventually seen to consist of the same pith-less wind as the shamans and God-men themselves.

The next fear I encountered was the fear associated when actively dismantling my instinctual being. These feelings of fear run deep for they are genetically-encoded instinctual reactions programmed into the very cells of my body. The almost constant on-guard-ness that produces the instantaneous fight or flight reactions in all animals is ultimately ‘self’-centred in human beings who are all imbued with an instinctual self. As such, any threat to this instinctual self – ‘me’ at my core – produces deep-seated and rudimentary instinctual feelings of fear. The only way I have ever dealt with these was to sit them out when they came – even if they do tend to rock your socks on occasions. These feelings can be so strong that they literally bruise the body. But I always found myself having breakfast the next day wondering at the intensity of animal instinctual survival program.

All of these fears – the socially instilled fears, the atavistically imbibed fears and the instinctually rooted fears – cannot be dispelled by investigation or understanding alone for the only way they can be really experienced as being non-factual is to continue pursuing actualism in spite of them. This experiential discovery that fear is only a feeling and not a fact then gives an actualist the confidence to dare to take the next obvious action and investigation thereby dispelling the next obvious fear.

All these fears eventually fade away for want of fuel and the marvellous thing is, as you become more happy and harmless, other people become less fearful of and less aggressive towards you, which only serves to dispel the feeling of fear even more.

*

PETER: Re-wiring my brain was how I saw this process. A bit from the Introduction is relevant to this business –

Facts vs. belief –

Peter: A discerning eye and ear is needed in order to ascertain what is fact and what is merely belief, theory, concept, assumption, speculation, conviction, imagination, myth, wisdom, or truth. It is easy to see when one knows how to look. Any belief is nonsensical. By its very nature a belief is not factually true ... otherwise it would not need to be believed to be true.

A fact is obvious; it is out in the open, freely available for all to see. To believe something to be true is to accept on trust that it is so. A fact does not have to be accepted on trust – a fact is candidly so. A fact is patently true, manifestly clear. A fact is what is ascertained sensately and thus demonstrably true. If you are to become free of believing you need to rely on fact – the verifiable, objective actuality – as a touchstone to test the sensibility of whatever ‘truth’ one suspects to be a belief.

A feeling is not a fact. Feelings have led humankind astray for millennia, without ever being questioned as to whether they are the correct tools for determining the facts of a matter. Feelings are held to be sacrosanct; they are given a credibility they do not deserve. They are seen to be the final arbiter in any contentious issue: ‘It’s my gut-feeling’, or ‘My intuition is never wrong’, or ‘It feels right’, and so on. Thinking, shackled by belief and feeling cannot operate with the clarity and benignity it is capable of. Introduction to Actual Freedom

GARY: There is a great deal of useful information in this passage and it sums up nicely the whole purpose of actualism. At any time recently when I am going through some troublesome emotion (and I regard all emotions to be troublesome, although they may not seem like it at the moment), I find it helpful to repeatedly remember that what I am going through, while it seems truly awful, is not actual. The emotions, emanating as they do from the primitive animal instincts, are chemical changes occurring in the physical body. They are located and have their origin in the primitive mid-brain region. When an emotion kicks in, it has definite physical correlates as in, for instance, the surge of adrenalin in anger or fear. These emotional reactions and the physical changes that occur in the body seem real but they are not actual.

PETER: Just a point here so as to make very clear the distinction between ‘seem real’, real, very real and actual. It may appear that I am nitpicking here but the continual failure to make this distinction clear is exactly why all previous attempts to bring an actual end to human animosity and misery have ended up dying in the bum.

Human emotions and passions are real in that they cause very real effects – all of the ongoing actual wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence, corruption, suicides and despair are the direct result of emotional reactions. There is a direct and irrefutable link – cause and effect.

However, to a spiritual person who has succeeded in dissociating from his or her own savage passions and emotions by regarding them as part and parcel of the ‘real’ world, any undesirable passions and emotions would only ‘seem real’, as in illusionary, and not Real or True. This is the spiritual process – the undesirable savage passions are ignored and dismissed while a new disassociated identity is created – the Real Me, totally Self-centred and myopically identified with the tender desirable emotions. As such, a spiritual person would say that emotional reactions only seem to be real, but that they not Real – a description that is cunningly close to your description and yet worlds apart.

For an actualist who has succeeded in diminishing the savage passions by the process of thorough investigation and incremental elimination, it is vitally important to remember that emotions and feelings are very real because they are the sole cause of all human misery and suffering. The only way to push on beyond the traditional ‘I’m okay – it’s only others who are needlessly fighting and suffering’ self-deception is to devote yourself totally to the altruistic goal of bringing an end to the actual malice and sorrow that ravages the human species.

And the only way to do that is by ‘self’-immolating in order that I, this flesh and body only, can delight in the ambrosial sensuousness of living in the actual world – for ‘I’ stand in the way of the already, always existing perfection and purity of the actual world from irrevocably becoming apparent. In short, ‘I’ am stopping peace on earth happening.

Eventually you start to get glimpses of the fact that I, this flesh and blood body, have always been here but I only have been playing a selfish and savage game of survival simply because everyone else insists that this is the way it is, because this is the way it is, because this is the way it has always been and this is the way it will always be’ ... and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

The thrill of peace on earth always triumphs over any feeling of fear that ‘I’ might have at ‘my’ impending extinction.

Altruism is the key to the door marked ‘Actual Freedom’ for me and ‘Peace on Earth’ for everyone.

17.1.2001

GARY: One has certain emotional reactions and others, picking up the vibes due to the psychic web that connects all human beings, often respond with their own emotional reactions. All of this play of emotions is a chemical process, taking place in a fervent imagination and it is not actual. Thus, reminding myself that it is not actual kind of pulls the rug out right from under the emotions, with the result that they can be examined and understood by a thorough-going process of investigation. One can step back and see one’s emotional life for what it is: a gross disabling condition that one is better without.

PETER: As I have said before, the comments I make may not necessarily apply to you in your process, but I tend to use these conversations to pass on any experiences, observations, discoveries and facts that I think may be of use to others who are reading. In my experience your description is spot on. The only thing I would add is that this process is most usually applied to the undesirable savage passions initially and this is essentially the easiest and most obvious work. You are in essence going with the flow of good vs. bad and society gives kudos and acclaim to such efforts. The more difficult work involves investigating and eliminating the tender passions for this is very much going against society’s morals, ethics and values and any efforts to eliminate what is regarded as the good and sacred elicits scorn, ridicule condemnation and anger.

I would again recommend the ‘180 degrees’ diagram because it schematically represents much of what I have been talking about recently. It makes clear the apparent initial similarities of the spiritual path and the actualist path and identifies the point of radical divergence where the two paths split in diametrically opposite directions.

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PETER: I do enjoy talking to others who are interested in actualism, passing on my expertise, comparing notes and sometimes coming up with a new way of saying something that may help to twig someone’s curiosity or interest. As I see this mailing list, it is a free-wheeling forum where those who are interested in actualism, or who have taken on actualism, can swap notes and relate experiences. What topics are talked about is secondary to the value of knowing that there are others doing the business of seeking freedom and peace on earth.

GARY: Sometimes I get disappointed writing because I think I have nothing original to say. I berate myself because I see that my writing is just a rehash of what others are saying, and I seem to only blend and combine ideas that I get elsewhere. Sometimes I compare myself to others and come out short. Richard is obviously a very intelligent man and has an easy command of the language. You also write well and particularly in your recent posts your writing is crisp and clear. I think I also write well and I have had people compliment me on things that I have written. As for berating myself, I am sure it does not do much good or any good at all and it is something else for me to look at. In the real world, the Land of Lament, there is a heavy emphasis on developing ‘self’-esteem, which is a sense of pride for one’s competencies, strengths, and achievements. Conversely, there is a lack of ‘self’-esteem, or what people call ‘low self-esteem’, as evidenced by an extremely critical attitude towards oneself or berating oneself for lack of achievement and inner worth.

PETER: The human social identity is rooted in comparison to others – we are taught by reward and punishment to conform to society’s standards – to be ‘good like Johnny or Betty’, ‘not to be bad like Tom or Sally’. As children our performance and behaviour is constantly ranked and rated at home and school in comparison to others as we are imbibed with a social conscience. Conformity and mediocrity become our role models and we have only two choices – either to humbly acquiesce or blindly rebel.

Humanity rewards conformity and punishes rebellion, giving rise to endless cycles of endemic necessary suffering and senseless necessary struggle. The only way out of this mess is to become autonomous – to break free of the shackles that continually hobble us to comparing ourselves to others who are similarly afflicted by the human condition. I found the only way to do this was to do it – thinking about it, worrying about it, or fearing the consequences of freedom only wasted even more time.

The only way to dispel comparison on the path to Actual Freedom is to do the best you can do. If this best is free of malice and sorrow, if this best is done with integrity, then whatever is done is simply the best in the circumstances. It is a bit weird when you get to the stage when you lose this ‘self’-measure of comparison with others for I find I now have no standard other than my own integrity. Believing in society’s hypocritical goods and bads, opinionated rights and wrongs, yearning for praise and cowering before criticism all gradually disappear and then it is as if there is nothing to hold on to – no external reference for ‘me’ in comparison to others. This stage can be unnerving and daunting and it is mightily reassuring that the sun comes up every morning, no matter what was going on in my head or my heart.

What I have come to see in my writing is that my experience is typical to all, in that I am a flesh and blood human being born into the human condition exactly like everyone else, and therefore my experience in becoming free of the human condition will be relevant to all. The usefulness of our conversations is that we on this list are the very first to be taking the direct route to an actual freedom from the human condition. The usefulness of anyone interested in writing about their own process is that a breadth of experiences will be recorded and made freely available on the web-site for anyone who is interested – for those who are doing it now and for those who will inevitably follow.

*

PETER: My next topic is a general observation about malice. Many people who get angry at others do manage to control their anger at the time – i.e. they do not get verbally or physically abusive – but then they most often take their bottled-up anger out on other people later. As an example, I would often notice a moodiness and irritability in someone at work, only to discover later that he had a disagreement with his wife the previous night. Even if anger is not directly expressed toward others, there is a definite resentful or irritated mood that is passed on to others unfortunate victims – a sort of seeping out of pent-up emotions that are crippling for both the person suffering from anger and for those he or she comes in contact with. A similar scenario happens if someone is feeling sad or depressed – these feelings are always spread out on to others in a unending cycle of mutual suffering. This continuous leaking of emotions is why it is vital to become virtually free of malice and sorrow as soon as possible – for even to become virtually harmless is an extraordinary freeing experience and a significant benefit for those we come in contact with.

GARY: Yes, I have noticed that there is always a ‘get-even’ component to anger. I have noticed myself letting comments slip at a later time that are the evidence that I felt angry about an eliciting event even though at the time I thought I had not felt angry. As I usually repress anger, this seems to make sense because I am sometimes not very aware of actually feeling angry. Then there are the many shadings of anger, such as irritation, peevishness, annoyance, etc. I agree with what you say about the ‘continuous leaking of emotions’ – they do tend to come out sideways when they are on board, and it usually doesn’t matter who is on the receiving end. To put an end to this is the greatest service that one can do for one’s fellow man and fellow woman. It is of far greater value than doing one’s bit in acts of charity or ‘random kindness’, which is just one’s sorrow and malice in disguise.

PETER: This is why it is important when running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to trace the feeling back to the incident that triggered the feeling of sadness, melancholy, anger, frustration or whatever. Quite often a feeling can hang around for days, weeks or even months, totally ruining your happiness and benevolence in this, the only moment you can experience.

If the triggering event was too far in the past to remember I didn’t bother trying to trace it because I would only be dredging through the garbage bin of the past looking for any old excuse or justification for my feeling angry and sad now. But if I could peg the feeling or emotion to some recent triggering event it was like finding gold because I was able to see the direct cause and effect relationship between feelings and behaviour. This discovery of cause and effect is the experiential understanding that ‘my’ precious feelings, while not actual, do give rise to effects that are very, very real.

With practice this process will eventually result in an almost instantaneous linking between triggering event and automatic emotional reaction – at this point, as I am fond of saying, it is really as if you have got this bugger – my self’ – by the throat. You get to see the emotional reactions kick in as they are happening and this ‘there it is again’ awareness weakens their stranglehold and enables intelligent appropriate reaction to overcome blind passion. If one particular reaction keeps returning again and again then this awareness in itself, when combined with integrity, will eventually goad you to actual change.

It is of no use at all to beat yourself up if you miss the onset of a debilitating emotion or feeling and fall into the pits for hours or even days or feel pissed off at someone for hours or even days. The important thing is that you become aware of how you are experiencing this moment of being alive and if it is not optimum, get out of it, get back to feeling good and then crank it up to being excellent if you can.

Another chance will always come along, a fresh opportunity for investigation and discovery – in the meantime, log up the hours, days, weeks and months of feeling good or feeling excellent, always being as harmless as possible. If you beat yourself up, the buggers who insist you remain sad and second-rate, are only winning.

GARY: I used to believe that ‘we are spiritual beings having a human experience’. Now I see that we are human beings having very, very real human experiences. And it sucks. The only way out of this besides either getting permanently stoned out of your mind, committing suicide, or following the traditional path of spiritual Enlightenment, is to discover the actual. And as it has been said many times before, the actual is right here right under our noses 100% of the time. Given what you have said about the intertwinement of the normal Real world and the Spiritual World, it would seem that the Real world and the Spiritual World are synonymous, and that ‘normal’ people are ‘spiritual’ and do subscribe to ‘spiritual values’. I used to wonder what was meant by the phrase ‘spiritual values’, and now I see that what is meant is Faith, Trust, Hope, Belief. These are all spiritual beliefs and values and these are things that valued, from what I can tell, by every human being that I have encountered. I have yet to encounter a human being that would tell you to abandon Hope.

PETER: One of my favourite subjects. A bit on Hope from the glossary –

Peter: It is surely time we abandoned the archaic concept of hope entirely. Humanity has been hoping that peace will come to the planet, hoping for an end to suffering while at the same time anticipating and prophesizing a doomsday end to civilization. Human beings hope that things will get better, be better in the future, while at the same time expecting that this is only possible after death, either in ‘the next lifetime’ or some ‘other-worldly’ realm. To hope or expect a future event, person or thing to bring happiness is to forever postpone the sensible action required to free oneself from instinctual fear, aggression, sorrow and malice and to ensure that one remains entrapped in the Human Condition.

Above the door of the Actual Freedom Trust offices (if there ever is such a thing) will be a sign that reads ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’. The Actual Freedom Trust Glossary, Hope

GARY: I had a strange experience today. It seems like a number of the clients I serve complained to my Supervisor that they do not ‘like’ me. One of the complaints is that I do not show any compassion or feelings (funny, as I do not believe in Compassion and I see feelings as a gross liability). In any event, it was suggested that I could not go on in a ‘Business as Usual’ mode today, and it was suggested that I take the day off with pay (delighted of course). I am wondering naturally what is to become of all of this, ie. whether I am to be tarred and feathered and driven out of town, asked to resign, laid off, etc. And I have been wondering if I just want to cut my losses and get another job. But this is actually a splendid opportunity to lay on the line what I have been learning in actualism and ‘face the music’ so to speak and listen to what people have to say about ‘me’ (only a ‘me’ could get defensive right?). Why should I turn tail and run?

PETER: The basic fear is that of survival. Careful observation is necessary to understand and experience that fear is only a feeling – ‘my’ fear of ‘my’ survival. Once I started to observe the feeling of fear in action I was able to separate out appropriate sensible action from ‘my’ feelings of fear or doubt. I began to see that, in fact, I had always survived despite many changes of jobs, relationships, lifestyle, religious belief, opinions, viewpoints, places of living, etc. I always had enough food, I always had shelter, I always managed in all the changes of circumstances.

Not that Existence provided, but I always responded to serendipitous opportunities or always took appropriate action or made a choice that was appropriate. In hindsight, I always moved on from what didn’t work and inexorably sought that which did. Always the dream of perfection and purity drove me on – not to live it as a dream but as a down-to-earth actuality, here and now. This search was a hit and miss affair, inevitably based on trial and error, and it invariably involved considerable effort and produced radical changes – but it was always fuelled by a stubborn refusal to settle for anything less than best.

Most people rile against change and fiercely resist it, for they feel they have no control over their lives. They yearn for a cotton-wool secure life and then resent their ‘self’-imposed constraints. They wistfully imagine that the past was better and desperately hope that the good fairy will come and make their future better – all the while ignoring the fact that they are already here, already doing the fascinating business of being a human being, in this the only moment they can experience

It is only ‘me’, ‘my’ life and ‘my’ worries and fears that continually conspire to pull me away from being here – dragging me off to ‘some time’ other than now, an imaginary future or past, or to a ‘somewhere’ else other than here, either immersed in grim reality or escaping into an imaginary fairy-tale spiritual La La land.

Being here is a thrilling business, not knowing what is going to happen next, what I will be writing next, let alone what I will be doing later. The only constant is that when later happens, it will be now and now has always been safe, and always will be safe.

There is no fear in the actual world.

30.1.2001

GARY: Your post coming through with the ‘doc’ part on the end of it at the subject line reminded me of Bugs Bunny: ‘What’s up, Doc?’. With that said, I will proceed to respond to at least some of the points and issues that were raised in this post of yours.

PETER: As for ‘what’s up Doc’ – in the last month Vineeto and I have upgraded both the hardware and software on our computers, so we have been running a touch ragged, sometimes missing applications and internet access, constantly shifting and shuffling back and forth. I was often amazed that anything went out at all, let alone mistake free or making sense.

*

PETER: The other kind of investigation is by deliberately setting out to make sense of a vexing issue, as we did in our recent conversation about intelligence vs. instinctual passion. In this type of investigation you root around and dig up all the information, data and observations you can and balance those against the currently accepted viewpoints and beliefs that others have about the subject, and then you eventually come to find an answer – to come to an understanding of the facts of the situation. Vineeto and I have spent many, many hours mulling over issues relevant to the human condition with no disagreement or disharmony simply because we were searching for the facts – something that is clearly evident, obvious and indisputable.

GARY: The only person I really talk to about these matters are people on this list and my partner. I have from time to time read her a little bit out of the book. I have read her a little bit from your Journal at times. Then we have discussed the issues presented in the writing and commented on it from our own experience. I rather like doing this and have learned a few things about her in the process. Given that I am practicing actualism myself, I suppose I carry that into the marketplace in a sense, but I do not proselytize (how could I?) nor do I really talk to anybody about it. I would, given the opportunity, but I am careful about this sort of thing. I recently talked privately to a couple of people who had written to me from a mailing list that I recently subscribed to. The response or lack of a response I got from them was an indication to me of the radicalness of actualism and the reluctance of people to question their cherished beliefs and assumptions. When someone is not willing to question their beliefs, thoughts and emotions, inquiry is dead in the water before it even starts to float.

PETER: Having been full-on on the spiritual path for 17 years I had a few friends who either were either left limping along as church-going spiritualists or were still shopping in the spiritual supermarket. I naively thought they would be interested in actualism but the moment they realized it involved questioning their spiritual beliefs, their automatic self-defence mechanism cut in and when they realized it also involved effort and work it was way too much for their spiritual ego. I just refused to let this experience muzzle me, which is why I chose to write about my experiences rather than try and change other people.

But this period of wanting to share my discovery of actualism was an invaluable experience – it taught me much about the human condition, which meant that it taught me much about ‘me’. Every time I heard an objection that was silly, I looked to see where I was being silly, and each time I could see another’s fears, I was encouraged to look at whatever fear it was that was masking the next obvious move I needed to make towards becoming happy and harmless.

In this way fear can be a signal for what change I am avoiding – remembering I am talking about something to look at and change in myself and not seeking the thrill of physical danger or the thrill of confronting someone else, as is common in the nonsense of ‘standing up for one’s rights’.

*

PETER: Fear most often manifests itself as differing forms of imaginary dire consequences at different stages in the process of actualism and it may be useful if I attempt to label these fears, based on my experience with the process.

GARY: The typology of fear is helpful. It helps to separate out and identify what kind of fear I am dealing with as it provides some understanding of where it comes from and what it is about. Fear is overwhelming but it can be seen to have a cause and effect. The imagining of dire consequences is a product of fear and a frequent accompaniment, as in worry, projecting negative outcomes, ruminating about a matter, etc. One can catch oneself in these activities if one is running the question ‘How am I experiencing ....’ and one then returns to the present moment of being alive...unless one wants to be miserable.

PETER: It’s good to hear it was helpful. I did wonder when I wrote it if it would be useful. Most of what I wrote was based on hindsight – it certainly did not occur to me that I would lose ‘my’ special friendships when I leaped into actualism – but as it started to happen I was easily able to deal with the consequences for something better always replaced whatever I left behind.

It soon became obvious that only by leaving behind what didn’t work or what was a compromise or what was a bondage was I able to allow something better to become apparent. Or to put it bluntly – no change means no change.

The other thing I would like to say is that I have only a working knowledge of the human condition and the instinctual passions – it is by no means exhaustive and it is thin on scholarly substance. I tend to operate on the ‘I only need to know what I need to know to get the job at hand done’, so my investigations most usually only applied to what was relevant to me. I have no idea at all as wether what I am saying has any direct relevance to the person I am writing to. I have no insight ability as to how someone else’s psyche operates, what they are particularly thinking or feeling. As such, what I write is more generic – thus far the cumulative result of a handful of actualists’ self-inquiries and experiences – but it stands the test of scrutiny if one observes the broad operation of the human condition.

*

PETER: The next fear I encountered was the fear associated when actively dismantling my social identity. The fear was that if I no longer believed what everyone else believed, if I no longer valued society’s morals and ethics, if I no longer thought and felt how I had been taught to think and feel, then I would certainly be punished and ostracized. <Snip>. As my social identity dissolved so did my fears of the dire consequences of punishment and ostracization.

GARY: I have not had any ‘friends’ for such a long time now. I always have been quite a loner. It used to bother me that I did not have many friends – a voice kept playing in my head telling me that this was not ‘normal’ and I ‘should’ have more friends, even though I did not want any. I have found the whole process of ‘making friends’ and ‘keeping friends’ so wearying that I am glad to have dispelled with the whole process.

PETER: What I discovered about my friendships was that the moment ‘I’ stopped maintaining them and cultivating them for my own self-ish purposes that the friend would also stop contacting me and the friend-ship would eventually sink because it needed two people, both constantly rowing, to keep it afloat.

I started to see that everybody is busily engaged in living their friends’ lives and not their own. When I eventually saw this clearly, I stopped the insidious practice of seeking others out for emotional support – mutually agreeing how tough things are – or blaming others for the mess my life was in. This proved a turning point in my living with Vineeto, as I started to take total responsibility for my behaviour, feelings, moods and actions.

*

PETER: There is also an atavistic component to this fear. Atavistic fears are those that are passed on over countless generations either as spoken or unspoken taboos that hint at horrific consequences should one dare to stray too far from the accepted norm. Many of these relate to retribution and revenge by the Gods and spirits or horrendous acts of torture wrought by the shamans and priests for heretics and those possessed by evil spirits. Often these fears would occur in dreams at night time or when stirring the wrath of some God-man on a mailing list. Provided you keep your wits about you and don’t goad a fanatic, investigating these fears can be great fun because these fears are eventually seen to consist of the same pithless wind as the shamans and God-men themselves.

GARY: I am enjoying engaging people more around the issues that concern me. I am ‘sticking my neck out’ more and I am exercising my mind, flexing my brain muscles. I am actually enjoying challenging some people on things that they are saying, particularly when these make little or no sense to me. I used to not have much stomach for this kind of thing – I think I lacked confidence. But now I am gaining confidence, and with it I am gaining the ability to speak my mind plainly without fear of the consequences. Sometimes I ask myself ‘What do I have to lose?’, and the answer that comes back is – nothing. Please note that I am not talking about goading or bullying people, but it does involve active engagement of the other in the process of inquiry into the items of interest. This can be done with anyone. Often people don’t like questions – I have been told that I ask too many questions. But questioning is the essence of inquiry.

PETER: I simply gave up talking to people face to face about Actual Freedom and reverted to occasionally dropping in a bit of common sense into a conversation – a much less confronting exercise, although even this does appear to stir up some issues in some people. I tried writing on a few spiritual mailing lists and was cyber-executed from one and censored off another, so I do my writing on the Actual Freedom mailing list now, but as you will have noticed even this list has now attracted a few perfervid objectors to peace on earth.

Whenever passion steps in, common sense goes out the window, which is why we have all the rapes, murders, domestic violence, child abuse, despair, suicides, corruption, religious conflicts, wars. It is so glaringly obvious and yet Humanity glories in its senseless passions.

*

PETER: Just a point here so as to make very clear the distinction between ‘seem real’, real, very real and actual. It may appear that I am nitpicking here but the continual failure to make this distinction clear is exactly why all previous attempts to bring an actual end to human animosity and misery have ended up dying in the bum. Human emotions and passions are real in that they cause very real effects – all of the ongoing actual wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence, corruption, suicides and despair are the direct result of emotional reactions. There is a direct and irrefutable link – cause and effect.

GARY: At first I thought there might be a misunderstanding of what I was saying but now I don’t think so. I was saying that the emotional reactions that are occurring in the body and the subjective experience of the emotion ‘seem real’, and maybe it was a poor choice of words. They are real enough – emotions can be studied, they can be observed by studying heart rate, galvanic skin response, etc. They have observable consequences. Then there are the hormonal and neuronal mechanisms involved in fright, anger, etc. So they are undoubtedly real. But by saying ‘seems real’, perhaps I conveyed the wrong message, because I distinctly remember being in that delusionary spiritual state, often telling myself things like ‘I’m in Heaven right now. None of this is really happening’ or ‘I rest in God’s Love. I am only Love. All else is not really happening’. These delusionary dissociative states are a denial of the reality of emotions, emotional reactions, and their associated destructive consequences in the real world of people and world events. What I meant to convey is that emotions are not actual, and one can find that out by remembering any Pure Consciousness Experiences they may have had – these are experiences of the actual. So, one has to be very careful, I think, not to be sucked into the delusionary state of denying emotions and the consequences that emotions have wrought in the world as it is while realizing that the emotions and passions are superimposed over and prevent a direct experiencing of the actual.

PETER: I don’t see any misunderstanding either. What you were saying was an accurate observation. I was more driving the point home that what appears to be a fine niggly distinction can widen into an unassailable gap of denial unless one is scrupulously honest and unless one’s intent is pure. There are many on the spiritual path for whom this gap may already prove too great to retreat from, i.e. they already have too much pride to lose, but for others their innate curiosity may win out in the long run.

As a child I was able to see the folly of following One-God religions, if only for the fact that the quandary of which God was the True God and which Gods were false Gods has produced almost continuous religious wars and conflicts. Then I got sucked into following a Godman’s promise of joining a community or Sangha that would bring peace on earth. When the experiment failed, as was inevitable, I began to see that the famed spiritual path was nothing other than olde-time religion.

That quite simple realization, i.e. an acknowledgement of fact that shattered the belief I previously held to be a truth, was sufficient to begin the process of extracting myself from the spiritual world and its blatantly ‘self’-centred beliefs and truths.

Looking back I see that advantage of my years on the spiritual path was that I discovered that the enslavery of the Eastern master-disciple system was the antithesis of freedom and that Eastern spiritual teaching is nothing other than a Self-producing prophecy, i.e. it does nothing but produce Godmen, Goddesses, Teachers, Gurus who do nothing but endlessly perpetuate the myth of the Truth, and their own exalted Godship.

What I discovered was simply that none of the spiritual teachings work in practice – that the feeling of Oneness, Love and Unity are ‘Self’-centred feelings only and are not facts. One only needs to look at the current phase of Spirituality where it has now devolved into cyber-disciples and cyber-Gurus, one day a week spiritualists and feel-good top-ups with some teacher or therapist. Spiritualism is on its last legs – the early days of naiveté and the promise of change have now become the staleness of cynicism and acceptance, as is evidenced on many spiritual mailing lists and in many spiritual communities.

Cynicism is typified by the ingrained belief that peace on earth is impossible and acceptance is typified by the spiritual belief that the current status quo we humans find ourselves in is part of some Divine Master Plan ... and therefore unchangeable by human beings.

Even when you get to live virtually free from the human condition, it is naiveté and a burning discontent that constantly energizes an actualist to lean forward towards the next step.

7.2.2001

PETER: Just to let you know that I am off-air again which is why I haven’t replied to your posts.  I had a problem staying on-line and sending and receiving mail some 6 weeks ago and I have been limping along via Vineeto’s computer ever since.  A change of hardware failed to fix the fault but eventually a complete formatting did for a short while, but a further change in hardware has seen the original fault re-surface.

I have decided to forgo writing until I get the machine humming again as it should.

11.2.2001

PETER: Well, so much for not writing for a while...

I am waiting for the computer mechanic to call back and was browsing through the posts and found I just couldn’t keep my fingers off the keyboard, so I’ll make a start on replying to you.

Although this post is generally in response to the ‘Actualism and PCEs’ post of 23/01, I have retitled my reply because the general topic does seem to be shifting to actualism in the market place, i.e. the process of becoming free of malice and sorrow, in the world as-it-is, with people as they are.

It is both a fascinating topic, which yet again serves to make a clear distinction between ancient Spiritual freedom and an actual freedom from the human condition in total.

The mailing list I was last writing to had as its discussion topic at one stage ‘how to be in the world but not of it’, which neatly sums up the spiritual approach. I would paraphrase this as ‘how to begrudgingly accept being here while taking every opportunity to be there’. I found the contradictions, sentence to sentence, in all of the contributor’s discussions to be quite bewildering. One moment they would talk of going ‘there’, or going ‘inside’, and the next sentence they would be extolling the virtues of being ‘here’ ... by their very words they were proving that they were not talking about the same place.

Whenever a contributor touched on the horrors of the human condition they would soon indulge in the bitter-sweetness of feeling sorry for those poor ‘ignorant’ people, ennobling their own pity as being superior by labelling it as feeling true compassion. Whenever someone dared to share the reality of their own lives they would be reminded by other group members that they are not in fact human beings but that who they really are is Divine spirits. Whenever someone began to despair of the human condition they were reminded that peace on earth is ultimately impossible and one’s only hope is to seek solace in the hope of an other-worldly paradise. Should anyone begin to question any of the passionate spirit-ual beliefs, or worse still, dare to question the teachings or the teacher, the tribal elders or head Shamans would quickly pull them into line, either by seducing the group member by sweet talk or disciplining them with a loving reminder. If seduction or castigation fail the ultimate threat is of ostracization.

Once you are hooked into the spiritual world, it’s very tough to get out of it.

I think I have wandered slightly off-topic because I began by talking about the diametrically-opposite difference between coming here to the actual world and going ‘there’ to the spiritual world. Just a little story from my spiritual years will illustrate the fact that actualism is 180 degrees different to Spiritualism.

When I was a freshman spiritual disciple of Mohan Rajneesh, I remember being awed when a long-time disciple told me that they had met Rajneesh in person and how, when he looked into His eyes, there was nobody inside – meaning there was no personal self inside His body. I thought it a bit strange at the time because I understood Enlightenment was about being here. But then again, personal Enlightenment was not really on my agenda because I had joined up because I had fallen in love with Rajneesh and we, his Sannyasins, were going to change the world by practically demonstrating to people that we could live together as a community in peace and harmony.

Some ten years later, when I met Rajneesh in person and looked into his eyes, I realized he was not here at all but was really somewhere else. Of course, my experience was that he was not here in the ‘real’ world, but had really gone ‘there’ to the spirit world – but he was definitely so far-out from anything that was going on in the physical world that nothing could bring him back. This impression of far-far-outness, as in being on another planet altogether, was confirmed only months later when he died and the words on his tombstone read – ‘Never born, Never died, Just visited this planet’.

‘Tis strange looking back as to how the intensity of the feeling of love could so blind me that I either ignored, or blatantly denied, the fact that I was the follower of a God-man, that I had simply been suckered by his sweet talk, overwhelmed by the feeling of being loved and belonging to the congregation and enraptured by his psychic cunning into being a faithful goody-two shoes, holier-than-thou, religious believer.

And not only that, my love for the God-man was unconditional – as in totally faithful, totally loyal and totally unquestioning. Unquestioning of his duplicity, contradictions, lies, deception, angry outbursts, his greed and lust for power, his blatant refusal to be responsible for anything he did or said, his running away and abandoning his followers when the going got tough, his secretive sex-life and his manipulation of those close to him for his own ends.

What an utter blind fool I had been, but then again ... once you are hooked into the spiritual world – it’s very tough to get out of.

*

PETER: And, before this post gets too long, I’ll get back to our conversation ...

GARY: The whole recent situation at work got me in touch with my fear of failure, and I even felt that I had failed at actualism. I don’t think I have expressed this before, but I have feared that I was a failure at that which I am most interested in- peace and harmony with those around me. I also think in some respects I am afraid to practice actualism because I am afraid I will end up bereft of companionship, home, sanity, income, and comfort. I think very subtly I have had the attitude: ‘So, this is what it all has gotten you – now you’ve lost your job and embarrassed yourself – see what you get!’ Sometimes it gets so scary I wish I could turn tail and run back to the ‘safety’ of the Human Condition. Actually, thinking about it, I suppose I could if I really wanted. So, Peter, I think I am finding the doing part very difficult. I seem to be spinning my wheels a lot fearing the consequences.

PETER: What I found essential was to always remember how far I had come, how much better my life was since I first started to focus my awareness on ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ Sometimes I would lose the plot but whenever I met other people, be they ‘spiritual’ or ‘normal’, I was reminded I no longer complained about the weather, I no longer got angry at others, I no longer put down other people, I no longer bitched about life or blamed other people for how or what I was feeling, etc.

The trick was to remember my down-to-earth successes whenever doubt started to set in, to crank up my YES to being here. It is almost as though one needs a blackboard with successes written on it, and you make a habit of wheeling it every now and then so as to make a calm dispassionate review of your successes in becoming happy and harmless. In short, pat yourself on the back regularly.

The other way I had of looking at the process I was undertaking was that it was as though I was cleaning out dark dirty cupboards and once it was thoroughly cleaned out I could put a label on it saying ‘finished, well-done’. If I hadn’t finished with that issue or a worry came up or a feeling re-emerged then I had something more to look in that cupboard, but I wouldn’t beat myself up because I had missed understanding something completely.

Getting down on myself, despairing or getting angry at myself is nothing but the aggressive instinct turned in on myself, a perversity that I had seen crippling so many people in my life that I simply refused to go down that path. Whenever I felt the slippery down-hill slide starting, I quickly went back to acknowledging and experiencing my successes – feeling good or feeling excellent, reaping the rewards of my efforts.

This business of becoming free of the human condition already feels tough enough at times but to beat yourself up for not succeeding simply means yet another moment of potential happiness and harmlessness has been squandered in ‘self’-indulgence. And again, this is not denial, because the next real thing to investigate, the next real issue to investigate, will come swanning in by itself.

In the market place, unlike the Monastery, Sangha or ‘inner’ cave, there is an ample supply of normal events and normal people to test one’s happiness and harmlessness.

*

PETER: The only way to dispel comparison on the path to Actual Freedom is to do the best you can do. If this best is free of malice and sorrow, if this best is done with integrity, then whatever is done is simply the best in the circumstances. It is a bit weird when you get to the stage when you lose this ‘self’-measure of comparison with others for I find I now have no standard other than my own integrity. Believing in society’s hypocritical goods and bads, opinionated rights and wrongs, yearning for praise and cowering before criticism all gradually disappear and then it is as if there is nothing to hold on to – no external reference for ‘me’ in comparison to others. This stage can be unnerving and daunting and it is mightily reassuring that the sun comes up every morning, no matter what was going on in my head or my heart.

GARY: In some respects I feel I am now doing the best I can under the circumstances. I said a couple malicious things when I was under the gun but it could have been worse.

PETER: If becoming free of malice and sorrow was easy someone would have done it before, Richard and the few hundred or so who have read of it would have all jumped at the opportunity. Pioneering isn’t easy but it sure is a grand adventure.

GARY: I am going in to where I worked this afternoon for an ‘exit interview’ and I am keenly aware of not wanting to bad-mouth anyone and leave on the best terms possible. This was not true over the weekend when I got myself in a worked-up state, resentfully focusing on getting ‘revenge’ by maligning my supervisor’s handling of the situation. As I told you before once, I have always had a terrific resentment of authority figures and it has dogged me my entire life. If there is anything good to come out of this situation, it is to screw up my determination and intent to rid myself of this destructive feeling, as well as the other feelings.

PETER: One of the toughest things to do is break the ingrained habit of blaming someone else for my feelings – to stop saying he/she made me angry rather than saying I am angry and that someone’s words or some particular event was simply the triggered. Not only is this going against our childhood cunning of learning to blame others but it also goes against our ‘natural’ instinctual behaviour.

What I did was start with the most obvious people and they were the people I most interacted with. I had always failed at living with a woman in anything remotely resembling utter peace and harmony so that was the obvious place to start. Once I managed to stop blaming Vineeto for my failures and feelings, I was able to see what it was in me that stopped me being able to live with her completely peacefully with no disagreements, no annoyances, no conflict, no resentments, no begrudging compromises, no secrets, no differing viewpoints. This involved tackling all the man-woman issues that forever condemn men and woman to belong to two separate waring and suspicious camps and my success was stunning, to say the least. The end result of my efforts is a pure and simple delightful companionship and unfettered intimacy with a fellow human being, with the added pleasure of sexual play between male and female.

Once that the problem of living together with a woman was out of the way – and it took many months of very intense effort to be successful – I was then able to fully focus on other areas where I traditionally blamed others for me being unhappy, thereby inevitably feeling malice towards them. Anyone whom I felt had power over me inevitably brought up resentment and when I eliminated this issue I stopped senselessly riling against bosses, police, neighbours, friends, politicians, the system, some life force or ‘life’ – in short, I stopped blaming others and solely focussed on ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

Crucial to this business of not blaming others or my circumstances for my unhappiness, my sorrow, my annoyance, my fear, etc. is to realize that I was in fact blaming everyone else for not having the same values, morals, ethics or beliefs that ‘I’ did. As such, every woman I had lived with needed to kowtow to my changing and fickle version of perfection and had to put up with my moods, my worries and my resentment. Everyone I worked with was similarly judged as not coming up to my standards and of wrongly judging and treating me – they were wrong, they got angry, they were selfish – they all needed to change, not ‘me’.

It soon becomes apparent that it is ‘me’ who is incapable of living or working peacefully with any of the 6 billion people on the planet – that the problem was ‘me’ – and not everyone of the other 6 billion people.

*

GARY: Yes, I think I can see that my behaviour, which I am prone to severely castigate myself for, was little different than most people in a similar situation. When one’s ass is on the line, one can see many people kick into instinctually malicious, fearful, or aggressive behaviours. I think I am little different in this respect. Continued practice of actualism probably resulted in a situation where I was able to stand up for myself and assert my autonomy rather than remaining miserable and bringing my job home with me.

PETER: Autonomy I have as – ‘Independence, freedom from external control or influence; personal liberty’ Oxford Dictionary. My experience with becoming autonomous neither involved asserting my will, authority, views or values upon others, nor does it involve surrendering to others. It is useful to remember that actualism always involves a third alternative and if in a situation a decision is to be made or a choice is to be decided then, provided there is no emotion involved, a review of the facts will result in sensible and innocuous appropriate action.

As far as working for money goes, it is obvious that one sells one’s time in exchange for money. In selling one’s time, services or expertise, it is clearly evident that the boss or the customer always has the final word.

I had this conflict often in my job where a client would employ me as an expert in building design and yet sometimes do something that I considered not right in my view or that was not the best solution in my view. Only when I finally got to the point where I experienced the utter futility of my riling against the situation, or attempting to exert my supposed rights, did the accompanying emotions abate sufficiently and peace and calm become perceptible. By seeing the facts and the futility of my objecting to them or emotionally reacting to them, I was consequently able to remain happy and harmless no matter what was said or what the situation was.

As this process produced more successes in varying testing situations and my confidence grew more and more, I was then more and more able to slip out from control and it eventually became more and more effortless to be both happy and harmless, no matter what. Or to put it another way, eventually what is unnatural – to be happy and harmless – increasingly becomes more and more natural and easy.

*

PETER: This is why it is important when running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to trace the feeling back to the incident that triggered the feeling of sadness, melancholy, anger, frustration or whatever. Quite often a feeling can hang around for days, weeks or even months, totally ruining your happiness and benevolence in this, the only moment you can experience.

GARY: Yes, I’ve had some recent experiences of that, much to my chagrin. It seems sometimes that despite my ardent efforts to keep the question running, I slip back into anger and fear. I’m flabbergasted right now and wondering if I’m doing something obviously wrong, whether I am deluded, or just what is happening. I think recently, going back to the time of my last post, quite a bit of anger was brewing in me, which later came exploding to the surface when I resigned. I was not really aware of just how intensely angry I was. Perhaps that’s a partial explanation.

PETER: Again that blackboard with successes written on the top, or however you want to see it, is invaluable. The bottom line is always if I stuffed up yesterday, or if I have been lost in some worry or overcome by some emotion, it was in the past – finished, gone. The success is that you have now discovered it and you can get back to feeling good or feeling excellent again. The trick is not to get down on yourself otherwise you are again missing out on experiencing this moment, the only moment you can experience of being alive, to the optimum.

*

PETER: If the triggering event was too far in the past to remember I didn’t bother trying to trace it because I would only be dredging through the garbage bin of the past looking for any old excuse or justification for my feeling angry and sad now. But if I could peg the feeling or emotion to some recent triggering event it was like finding gold because I was able to see the direct cause and effect relationship between feelings and behaviour. This discovery of cause and effect is the experiential understanding that ‘my’ precious feelings, while not actual, do give rise to effects that are very, very real.

With practice this process will eventually result in an almost instantaneous linking between triggering event and automatic emotional reaction – at this point, as I am fond of saying, it is really as if you have got this bugger – my self’ – by the throat. You get to see the emotional reactions kick in as they are happening and this ‘there it is again’ awareness weakens their stranglehold and enables intelligent appropriate reaction to overcome blind passion. If one particular reaction keeps returning again and again then this awareness in itself, when combined with integrity, will eventually goad you to actual change.

It is of no use at all to beat yourself up if you miss the onset of a debilitating emotion or feeling and fall into the pits for hours or even days or feel pissed off at someone for hours or even days. The important thing is that you become aware of how you are experiencing this moment of being alive and if it is not optimum, get out of it, get back to feeling good and then crank it up to being excellent if you can.

Another chance will always come along, a fresh opportunity for investigation and discovery – in the meantime, log up the hours, days, weeks and months of feeling good or feeling excellent, always being as harmless as possible. If you beat yourself up, the buggers who insist you remain sad and second-rate, are only winning.

GARY: Your words here only confirm my recent experiences. I am getting a fresh look at how cunning and crafty ‘I’ can be. For instance, I can tell myself that I am not angry when I am actually seething in anger.

PETER: Emotions have a curious quality in that they colour and distort not only what is happening now but they also colour and distort what has happened recently. If sadness overwhelms us it seems as though our whole life has been miserable, if anger arises it seems as though it has always been there. This was hard to discern in myself initially but it was obvious whenever I talked to Vineeto in one of our end-of-day chats. Sometimes she would say I have been feeling, say lacklustre, all day. I would ask her if she felt that when we were down in the village at the coffee shop and she would say ‘not then’. I would ask her how she was at work and she would say she was into her work and enjoying it. Eventually it emerged that the feeling had only recently emerged or had only briefly occurred but that it now felt as though it had been there all day.

This is why it is vital to chock up success – driving to work, fine, feeling good – morning at work, one flash of annoyance because of ... soon back to feeling fine – lunchtime, feeling excellent – etc. It is equally as important when running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to acknowledge that you are feeling fine, good or excellent as it is to acknowledge that you are feeling lacklustre, bored or annoyed.

*

PETER: The basic fear is that of survival. Careful observation is necessary to understand and experience that fear is only a feeling – ‘my’ fear of ‘my’ survival. Once I started to observe the feeling of fear in action I was able to separate out appropriate sensible action from ‘my’ feelings of fear or doubt. I began to see that, in fact, I had always survived despite many changes of jobs, relationships, lifestyle, religious belief, opinions, viewpoints, places of living, etc. I always had enough food, I always had shelter, I always managed in all the changes of circumstances.

GARY: I see where I have been taking just this kind of approach during the present ‘crisis’. I’ve been focusing on the basic necessities and not allowing myself to get sucked into morbidly ruminating about my awful state. I have been putting one foot in front of the other and doing what needs to be done next.

PETER: Eventually I saw that my physical survival depended upon the ATM machine continuing to spit out enough printed pieces of paper when I put a plastic card into it for me to be able to afford to pay for food, clothing and shelter. Anything in excess to this basic requirement was then available to buy toys for leisure and pleasure. Thus, my only job was to ensure that the numbers on my receipt remained within sensible limits given the ebb and flow of expenditure.

*

GARY: I’ve got to get back to being happy and harmless. I can’t say I’m there yet. I’ve got an awfully lot going on my head and in my heart at the present time. I was practically having anxiety attacks and very sick feelings over the weekend. It was not very pleasant. Now it is a bit better. I don’t think my lows are quite as low as they used to be or my depressions are quite as depressed as they used to be. I think I pull myself out of it a lot faster.

PETER: Yea. As you begin to have success, any little set backs can be irritating or seem bigger than they are, or seem to last longer than they actually do. When I first got a computer 3 years ago I bought it as the best word processor with which to write my journal. Countless mistakes, faults, hits and misses later I can now use it not only for writing but for picture and video processing, drawing for work, participating on mailing lists etc. Often it felt like a struggle, often I saw others as better than me or quicker to get it than me, but I see now that I am reasonably competent using the machine by now. What capped it off was a technically minded friend who looked at my CAD program and said ‘Wow, that must be complicated’ and I was able to see how well I was doing at a fairly difficult and brand new task.

In comparison with learning to use a computer, becoming free of malice and sorrow is a much more difficult task requiring much more patience and perseverance, which is why it makes no sense to allow any glitches or misses that occur to blossom into something bigger than they are. Nipping the feeling or emotion in the bud was the expression you used. This is not suppression for if the feelings come up again next time in a similar situation, you get another opportunity to label the feeling, trace the source, do a bit more investigating and get back to feeling good.

Success is noticing you are feeling good now, either in a situation where you wouldn’t have felt good a while ago ... or for no particular reason other than the sheer delight in being here.

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