PETER: Hi Gary,

Whenever an adult observes a child there can be a degree of envy at what seems to be a carefree state. This is due to the fact that the instinctual animal ‘self’ is not substantially formed until about age 2 in children, i.e. the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are not yet fully functioning. The other relevant aspect is that the child’s social identity – the befuddled mishmash of an individualistic persona and a collective social conscience – is not yet fully formed until the age of about 7 years, which means much of the childhood years are spent in ignorance of the grim everyday reality that every adult experiences. <snip>

GARY: The envy can be for the child’s spontaneity and energy – they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of spontaneity, wonder, and excitement. And children can say things that are remarkably perceptive and ‘off the cuff’. This contrasts with the adult mode of functioning which seems to be ever-vigilant lest one defies some social convention or one of one’s imbibed and socially inculcated ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘ought to’ irrational beliefs. The spontaneity of childhood is soon enough trained out of one by one’s teachers, parents, etc. and the social identity becomes calcified and rigid. Then people try, through various means, to regain that ‘lost innocence’ but never seem to succeed.

PETER: It has been a good many years since my days of being a father, but I have recently had occasion to observe a 2½ year old, which rekindled my memory of my own children. What I observed is that there is a ‘natural’ – as in instinctually programmed – emergence of a very distinct ‘self’-awareness at about this age. There is a growing realization in all children that others think and feel differently to them – that other children, parents and adults, are separate and alien beings who had thoughts and feelings that were not only different but very often at odds with the child’s own thoughts and feelings. This stage of growing up sees the emergence of a natural cunning in the child, whereby the child learns by trial and error to be controlling and manipulative – to seek reward and avoid punishment by whatever means.

Whilst this ‘loss of innocence’ is to some extent socially learned by the child’s observation of parents, siblings and other children’s behaviour, the underlying and primary impetus is instinctual – the result of a natural development of rudimentary survival skills as opposed to imbibing social skills. Observation of other animal species confirms that both cunning and forcefulness are essential qualities needed to enhance the chances of any newborn animal’s survival and an observation of human infants reveals this same basic animal functioning at work.

I remember seeing in my own children the emergence of what could be described as an independent will at about age 2 – an independence that was definitely not taught, as it was very often displayed in behaviour and moods that were contrary to the children’s social training and the best intentions and efforts of both parents. This observation, combined with the fact that my two children had such distinct and divergent personalities, first led me to be suspicious of the nurture-can-cure-all belief.

After my younger son died, I found that I really had to question and examine this belief deeply or else I would have spent the rest of my life wallowing in guilt and sorrow because I had not been ‘loving’ enough as a parent. The belief that nurture can counter, cure or overcome the instinctual passions of malice and sorrow serves to cripple all parents and child carers with guilt, as well as being an all-to-convenient excuse for the human need to lay the blame at someone’s door rather than look deeply within themselves.

Having previously experienced that nurture fails to shelter children from the ills of humanity, the death of my son convinced me that I needed to devote my life to seeking a way to open the possibility for future children to escape from suffering the inevitable trails and traumas of being a human being within the human condition. My father’s advice to me, post Second World War, was ‘be happy’ but he wasn’t able to tell me ‘how to’. Standing beside my son’s coffin, I was suddenly faced with a task in life – I passionately wanted to be able to pass on to the next generation the missing ‘how to’.

I know I am at risk of labouring the point about nurture as the cure-all, but I do so with good reason. Understanding and acknowledging the fact that the genetically-encoded instinctual passions were the root cause of human malice and sorrow – the root cause of every war, of every murder, of every child molestation, of every rape, of every suicide, of every act of violence, of every bout of despair – was crucial to my turning away from being a believer in the tried and failed truisms and beginning to looking deep within myself in order to root out these instinctual passions.

GARY: I seem to recall, as a child, having times when I had the most intense fascination with what I was doing at the time, whether I was playing with something or studying something, or just experiencing something. Later, these experiences I tried to re-create through drug use. The ordinary cares and woes fell away and there was this intense fascination and absorption in the moment and what I was experiencing. Later, and more recently, I found in the Pure Consciousness Experience what I was looking for: this incredible vibrancy, aliveness, scintillating, coruscating (all those Richard-words and more to describe the experience) quality. It is the most amazing thing when one shifts into apperception, and one experiences naiveté.

PETER: One thing about the spiritual path that did not sit well with me, apart from feeling increasingly isolated and dissociated from the world of people, things and events, was the fundamental cynicism that underpins all spiritual belief – that the human experience is one of essential suffering. Because of this spiritual cynicism about life on earth meeting Richard, hearing of his experiences and reading his words was quite literally a breath of fresh air.

By taking on board what he had to say, and being able to relate to what he was saying by my own experience in a PCE, I was very soon able set off on the path to actual freedom. In doing so, I was able to forgo my cynicism and reconnect with my naiveté, I was able to cease practicing dissociation and begin being fascinated with being here, and I was able to begin the enthralling business of investigating all of ‘my’ beliefs and passions that make ‘me’ an inseparable constituent of the human condition of malice and sorrow.

Cynicism is the pits. It’s so delicious to have abandoned cynicism, to get in touch with my naiveté and devote myself fully to the business of becoming free from malice and sorrow.

GARY: You went on to say:

[Peter]: ‘Whilst very early childhood is an ignorance of the grim instinctual battle for survival in the real-world – as well as the repercussions of the socialization process – this psychological and psychic battle will inevitably be experienced first-hand by every child in family interactions, playground exchanges and, after puberty, in the world-at-large’. [endquote].

PETER: Speaking personally, I very quickly came to understand that sheltering my children from the world as-it-is was not only impossible but not even a good idea. Even in those days I had the acumen to know that learning happens only by the trial and error process of lived experience, and the wider the experience and the more completely involved in the experience the better chance of learning.

GARY: Since humans are for the most part all engaged in this grim instinctual battle, too many children unfortunately fall prey to the predatory nature of human beings. Compared to spiritualism, Actualism has its eyes wide open to the widespread phenomenon of child abuse. This is one of the things that attracted me to Actualism – we are concerned with finding a solution to problems which concern everyone and which are universal – although the ultimate solution of these problems is most radical indeed ... only when humans cease ‘being’ will there be an end to all the child abuse, war, rape, murder, torture, etc.

PETER: Yep. Actualism is as hands-on and as down-to-earth as you can get.

*

PETER: The deep-seated belief that the ignorance of the formative, preoperational years of childhood is an innate innocence is what fuels the whole fanciful notion that nurture is the panacea for instinctual malice and sorrow, and that ‘proper’ nurture can even prevent their onset. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the faith that nurture can assuage or overcome malice and sorrow is seen as inviolate within the human condition. Like all belief and faith, it only has legs for want of a new and effective workable alternative’.

GARY: You have again hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with this observation, and I must say that it is a remarkably persistent notion. I find myself falling into it too – that if these children only had enough love, everything would be all right. It is the old ‘What the world needs now is Love Sweet Love’ idea, sung once as a pop music, expressing the hopes of a Generation, but repeated yet again and again.

PETER: As I understand it, you have been trained as a social worker and core to this training would be the belief that nurture is the panacea for malice and sorrow. As such, it is no wonder you find it a remarkably persistent notion. I know that it has taken me a long time to prise apart the beliefs and passions that were instilled in me as part of my training in architecture.

I was taught that there was a higher spiritual good in architecture – that ‘good’ architecture could nourish the soul, raise the spirits and make the world a better place. The instilling of these beliefs and passions formed the backbone of my identity as an architect and gave ‘my’ work a higher, nobler meaning. This meant that not only did I bring ‘my’ demands and expectations, worries and anxieties to my work and to all interactions with others through my work, but also a good deal of self-righteousness. Not only did ‘I’ always come first, but ‘I’ always knew better and ‘I’ was always right – whereas everyone else came second, never understood and were always wrong. It was a recipe that invariably led to conflict at worst or begrudging compromises at best.

As I began to realize how much these instilled beliefs and passions prevented me from being happy while working and caused me to be in conflict with others while working, I began the procedure of investigating the nature of them every time that I became aware of these beliefs and passions in action. This being aware of the tell-tale signs of holding a belief dear to your bosom reveals reactions ranging from feeling personally affronted or defensive if your belief is questioned, to denying, dissociating from or obscuring any facts that contradict or make your precious deary-held belief a non-sense.

When I finally traced the passions evoked by my work back to my training, I could see that all vocational training is spiked with beliefs that would have us fighting for the good in the battle over evil – be they a social worker combating the evils of society, an architect combating the evils of bad design or a doctor fighting the evils of death and disease. A PCE finally revealed the fact that my identity as an architect was made up of a mishmash of ‘my’ instilled beliefs and ‘my’ personal passions and to be able to do my work when free of this identity is to be unconditionally happy and effortlessly harmless.

So I wouldn’t be at all concerned that you find yourself falling back to the notion ‘that if these children only had enough love, everything would be all right’. Because of your vocational training you have had the belief that nurture is the cure-all for the ills of humanity doubly reinforced, as it were. You have had an extra layer of belief laid on top of what everyone else believes, in a similar way that I had another layer of beliefs about beauty instilled into me. I found that after a good deal of investigation I was able to identify ‘my’ belief as being nothing else but a belief in that it had no basis in fact … and then I ‘had the bugger by the throat’ as it were. Then it was only a matter of being attentive as to when and how the belief manifested itself. Each instant of awareness threw more light on the belief and its associated passions, enabling me to dig a little deeper into my psyche and discover its workings.

GARY: As another form of ‘nurturance’, apart from what is commonly called Love, is ‘understanding’.

PETER: And a little reading of history reveals that these international accommodations produce at best a temporary lull in hostilities and a provisional cessation of suspicions and grievances, whilst many only serve to become the basis for future resentments. Inter-tribal suspicions and grievances run far too deep to be ever eliminated via accommodation, conciliation, compromise, pact or the like. The first and only step towards a practical workable solution is for sufficiently motivated individuals to take unilateral action by ceasing to be tribal members – to be a pioneer global citizen rather than continue to be a paid-up passionate member of one or other of the warring tribes.

The very same thing applies to being a paid-up passionate member of one or other of the warring sexes – the only way to begin to end the cycle of hostilities, grievances, suspicions and resentments is to firstly stop being a part of the male tribe or stop being a part of the female tribe. Having done so, one rids oneself of most of one’s social masculine or feminine identity such that the deeper instinctual levels are more readily available for scrutiny. This is the only practical way to bring an end to the battle of the sexes that invariably prevents an unconditional and actual intimacy between the male and female genders.

GARY: Just a word on the pace of these posts. I certainly enjoy the leisurely pace of the posts on this list, as someone else phrased it. I have rarely of late felt impelled to rapidly respond to any post, yet I notice that if I delay too long in responding, eventually I lose interest and may not respond at all. Sometimes I take something someone has said and subject it to great scrutiny – it may or may not then lead to interaction or inquiry with the person who wrote the post originally, yet the other person’s observation has been quite useful in triggering some investigation on my part. I see that there is quite a bit of activity right now on the list. There are several parallel discussions going on at once, which is interesting. I think for the moment however, I will content myself with moving on to responding to the next post which you sent.

PETER: Yeah. I prefer to stick to my own area of expertise, which is the ‘how to’ of becoming happy and harmless. I particularly liked what Richard wrote recently –

Richard: ‘You may not have been subscribed to The Actual Freedom Mailing List long enough to notice that those peoples that have had, or remember having had, a PCE do not dispute what actualism is on about – nor do they have to have recourse to ‘third party’ settlement – rather that there is a sharing of experience and understanding and the querying of the various statements with the aim of elucidation rather than argumentation.’ Richard to No 34, 21.7.2002

Needles to say I like a discussion that is ‘a sharing of experience and understanding and the querying of the various statements with the aim of elucidation rather than argumentation.’

Nice to chat with you again.

17.10.2002

PETER: Hi Gary & No 38,

I’d just like to add my comment to your discussion about relationships.

GARY: I think I also experienced a momentary feeling of pity for my partner whose expressions of ‘love’ to me are usually not reciprocated, perhaps in they are in tender expressions of caring but certainly not in word, as I never speak the ‘love’ word anymore. I think there was an irrational belief operating in me at the time that went something like this: ‘What kind of partner are you after all – you should be telling your partner that you love her’.

One could easily substitute any number of words in the place of ‘partner’ such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘friend’, ‘coworker’, etc. The irrational belief that I ‘should’ be expressing love to these people caused me to feel momentary sadness, regret, and guilt.

RESPONDENT No 38: I had found myself in a very similar position a while back, and it provided plenty of (painful) opportunity for observation. I think I came out of it with increased clarity, but one question still remains:

Unlike Vineeto/Peter, I am not in a relationship with that level of shared determination and application. We do, however have a certain degree of caring for each other. It does give her pleasure to hear the word ‘love’ come out of my mouth towards her. Is it not reasonable to provide her that pleasure on occasion? Is it likely that we have been working through the whole concept of ‘love’, and as it slowly releases its iron grip, it is being reduced to merely a word? And in withholding this pleasure to others, we are hanging on to our concept of ‘love’?

PETER: I thought it might be useful to this particular discussion to explain my initial interest in actualism and how and why I came to be living with Vineeto. Although I have told the story in my Journal, most people who have read the story manage to misunderstand, misinterpret or re-interpret it.

When I first came across Richard I spent a good deal of time checking out the sensibility of his story, as well as checking out whether he lived what he talked. I eventually got to the stage where the story made sense and, unlike those I had followed on the spiritual path, it was clear to me that he lived what he talked. As I found myself becoming more and more interested in actualism I found myself faced with a dilemma. How best to road-test actualism in order to find out if the method worked in practice?

Previous to this time I had been full-on on the spiritual path, was not in a relationship, had lived in shared houses for several years and had spent the last year living alone. It was in this latter monk-like period that I gradually lost my grip on reality and had a substantial Satori experience – a glimpse of what enlightenment would be like. It occurred to me that if I continued to live alone then it would be very easy to treat actualism as a philosophy or a belief and the danger was that I would go tripping off into all sorts of fantasies as I had done in my spiritual period.

However, as I have said often before, what really challenged me was Richard’s comment in the Introduction to his Journal –

Richard: ‘I started from a basic premise that if man and woman could not live together with nary a bicker – let alone a quarrel – then the universe was indeed a sick joke.’  Richards Journal, Introduction

There was such a blindingly obvious sensibility to this statement that I decided that this too would be my starting point in actualism.

In making this decision, I knew I would be testing actualism not only in an utterly down-to-earth arena – one-on-one male-female relationship – but one that Eastern spiritualism failed to address. The appeal of this method of testing actualism was that, whilst I knew from experience I could very happily live by myself, I preferred to live with a companion. I had always wanted to understand the nature of the odious gender divide and I had always wanted to be free from sexual inhibitions as well as instinctive sexual predatoriness. Deep-down I knew that if I wanted to be happy and harmless in the world-as-it, with people as-they-are, then the big issues in life had to be tackled and understood – not dismissed, denied or avoided. And one of the really big issues was man and woman living together in utter peace and harmony.

So it could be said that my deliberately finding a companion with whom to road-test the actualism method only meant I was catching up to where you guys started – faced with the challenge of living with at least one other person in utter peace and harmony. From feedback over the years, it is clear that many people have misunderstood the nature of this challenge. It is not about waiting for, or demanding, that the other person changes – that they become happy and harmless in order that you can be. Nor is it about waiting for some like-minded person to come magically wandering into your life in order for you to change.

Everybody who comes across actualism starts from where they are now, in the life circumstances they find themselves in. If you are already with a companion, then that is where you start, if you are alone, that is where you start. No matter what age, culture, gender, life experience or life circumstances – if you want to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, then right now is always the time to start and right here is the place to start.

This is not to say that you may not want to change your life circumstances in order to make life easier – contrary to popular belief there is no virtue in suffering – or that you may want to take on an adventure or a challenge of some sort. But no matter what an actualist’s life circumstances are, his or her main priority in life will always be to be happy and harmless right now.

I do remember that I spent a lot of time comparing my life experience and life circumstances with Richard’s. Eventually I came to see that making such comparisons was a red herring because my life experiences and life circumstances are what has happened as a fact and what is happening now as a fact. The only salient thing that stood out in Richard’s stories of his time before he became actually free was his whole-hearted intent and stubborn persistence to explore every avenue of his psyche in his quest to become actually free from the human condition – to leave no stone unturned, as it were.

Just to add another thought to the discussion that might be relevant. The last century has seen a remarkable revolution in women redefining their traditional social/gender roles and this seems to have left many men bemused about their own social/gender role. Whilst many women are now refusing to play the role of slave in their relationships, men generally seem reluctant to dare to take the same step.

My own experience is that this social/gender programming, both the male and female, needed to be scrupulously examined in order that I could become free of the effects of both. These investigations were an oft-confronting business because there is a lot of darkness hidden beneath the generally well-meant goodness – however the tangible rewards far exceed the unfulfilled and fickle promise of love.

By putting becoming happy and harmless as a higher priority to hanging on to the mores, habits and hopes of a traditional man-woman relationship, I am now able to relate to women as fellow human beings and not members of the ‘opposite sex’ – not only the woman I choose to live with, but all women.

10.11.2002

PETER: I thought it might be useful to this particular discussion to explain my initial interest in actualism and how and why I came to be living with Vineeto. Although I have told the story in my Journal, most people who have read the story manage to misunderstand, misinterpret or re-interpret it.

GARY: Although you did not address me specifically, and I have read your account of your partnership with Vineeto, I do not think I have misunderstood that part of your Journal.

PETER: Yes. I had 3 failed relationships and figured that it was impossible for any man and woman to live together in peace and harmony without begrudging compromises. And this resignation came not only from my own personal experiences but from observation of ever man-woman relationship I had seen or read about.

When I became an actualist I found this cynical attitude was no longer acceptable to me. One of the most important admissions I came to make was that I was at least equally at fault in causing the past failures of my relationships. This meant that in trying again, I was determined this time to not hold back – to give it my all. I knew that nothing short of 100% commitment on my part would bring success. Only by making a hundred percent commitment could I be certain that it would be no fault of mine if living together with a new partner in peace and harmony did not work out.

Exactly the same intent would also have applied if I had already been living with someone at the time I decided to become an actualist. I would have wanted to stop holding back and fully commit myself to the task of living in utter peace with that person. This would have meant I would have changed myself such that I stopped being grumpy, moody, resentful, burdensome, demanding, distanced, aloof and so on – i.e. that I was no longer being a burden on the person that I choose to live with.

And, if there had not been a woman I had been attracted to as a companion, then I would have started the process of living in peace and harmony with friends, colleagues at work or family members simply because it makes good sense to start with those closest. After all, the challenge in actualism is to be able to live with one’s fellow human beings in utter peace and harmony – not as a theory or a philosophy, nor as a hope or a ‘self’-aggrandizing imaginary feeling, but as an actuality, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are.

*

PETER: However, as I have said often before, what really challenged me was Richard’s comment in the Introduction to his Journal – ‘I started from a basic premise that if man and woman could not live together with nary a bicker, let alone a quarrel, then the universe was indeed a sick joke.’ There was such a blindingly obvious sensibility to this statement that I decided that this too would be my starting point in actualism.

GARY: Here your experience is definitely different than mine. The fact that there have been many bickers along the way in my relationship initially produced, when reading this comment, a sheepish feeling of disappointment and failure in me, which I relate to your comment about comparing your experience to others. While having a relationship with nary a bicker I regard as both a theoretical and practical possibility, the simple fact is that there have been bickers in my union with present partner. However, as I recognize that it takes two to bicker...it being impossible for one person to bicker in a relationship unless there another person to bicker back, I regard these times of strife as opportunities to look into precisely what is causing my discomfiture.

PETER: I think my comment above relates to the fact that, while you and I and others have had different life experiences and have different living circumstances, the over-arching challenge facing each and every human being is to be able to actually live in peace and harmony with all of one’s fellow human beings. For this to happen it is obvious that one needs to put actualizing peace on earth above one’s own ‘self’-centred beliefs and ‘self’-centred survival passions.

*

PETER: Everybody who comes across actualism starts from where they are now, in the life circumstances they find themselves in. If you are already with a companion, then that is where you start, if you are alone, that is where you start. No matter what age, culture, gender, life experience or life circumstances – if you want to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, then right now is always the time to start and right here is the place to start.

GARY: I certainly agree with this statement. I think it matters not who or where you are ... right now is the time to start. That my partner is more enamoured of the Human Condition than I am ... matters not so far as what I am doing. We have some interesting conversations about things and I find there are some interesting points of contact, times when we are sharing our experiences and thoughts with one another, wholly without artifice or device.

PETER: Yes. And when you get to the stage of living peacefully with your partner as-she-is – without gracelessly demanding that she should change to suit your ideas, whims and moods – then the same naïve conversations can occur with any human being.

As for those little French accent marks, if you write your letters in MS Word then all sorts of odd hieroglyphics are available by using ‘Insert’ – ‘Symbol’.

*

PETER: This is not to say that you may not want to change your life circumstances in order to make life easier – contrary to popular belief there is no virtue in suffering – or that you may want to take on an adventure or a challenge of some sort. But no matter what an actualist’s life circumstances are, his or her foremost priority in life will always be to be happy and harmless right now.

GARY: When you think about it, what better opportunity is there than living in close proximity with another human being, ‘living together’, to take on the dare of living happy and harmless right now?

PETER: There is lot contained in the phrase Richard uses – ‘to be free to be happy and harmless – in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are’. Not happy and harmless in some mythical afterlife or some utopian future but right now, in the world as-it-is. And not a freedom conditional upon retreating from the world or on feeling superior to others but a freedom from any skerrick of malice and sorrow in all of one’s dealings with all of the people one comes in contact with.

Only recently an incident bought home to me that my own feelings of malice and sorrow are inseparable from the feelings and passions that cause all the wars, rapes, murders, torture, child abuse and domestic violence amongst the human species. Someone said something about my work that caused me to take offence and because I was sufficiently aware of my reaction I did not react at the time. I did however stew over it a bit later for a while until I was able to get back once more to feeling excellent. The very next day a different person became angry with me, again about a work issue, and I could see clearly that my reaction of feeling offended was of the very same ilk as his anger – both reactions were rooted in instinctive ‘self’-centred reactions, be they defensive or offensive.

What was startlingly clear to me from this incident was that it is impossible for ‘me’ to become actually happy and harmless – innocence personified – because ‘I’ am at root a malicious and sorrowful being. I remember a distinct feeling of shock – ‘what have I got myself into’ that demands ‘my’ demise in order for there to be a successful outcome. But then again I reminded myself that thinking and feeling oneself to be a separate alien entity is a weird and perverse business – the anguish and animosity that exemplifies the human condition readily testifies to this fact.

There is no question whatsoever of going back to being normal – that is an impossibility because I have come too far to accept compromise, let alone consider failure. ‘A stubborn refusal to settle for second best’ is how I would describe the intent to see this process through to its natural completion. As I see it, this stubborn intent is what overcomes the glue-like inertia to stay with the herd and not change and this stubborn intent is what will eliminate the impulse of ‘self’-preservation and ‘self’-perpetuation produced by the instinctual animal survival programming.

Well that’s it for now.

Nice to chat again.

7.1.2003

PETER: Nice to hear that you are back on-line again.

I thought I would write to the list about a few aspects of the human condition that became obvious to me in my day to day living over the past weeks.

As you would know from your own experience, it is one thing to read something that say Richard has said about some aspect of the human condition but it is another to confirm it as fact by your own observations of others. However a bona fide significance and life-changing consequences only come when you become attentive as to how that particular aspect of the human condition operates in you, as ‘you’, a thinking and feeling entity – be it as a feeling or as a compulsion, be it manifested either as a covert action or am overt action. In other words, it is only the decisive act of attentiveness, or ‘self’-awareness, of the human condition in operation, when combined with sincerity, is the ending of, i.e. the freedom from, that particular aspect of the human condition.

Because I am a seasoned practicing actualist, nowadays most of my observations serve as reminders of how much I have changed since starting this business – of how much of the human condition I have become free of over the years. I do like these reminders because they clearly point to an inevitable end to a process that, whilst seeming so daunting at the start, has proved to be surprisingly straightforward.

The first observation I had was about ‘relationships’ – the man-woman, living-together type. I was laying back in bed with Vineeto the other night, enjoying a particular intimate moment, when I realized the intimacy I was enjoying was the result of going into the relationship fully, of not holding back, of not settling for anything less than the very best. This continually ‘leaning forward’ rather than holding back was the only way I came to discover what was preventing me from experiencing the exquisite intimacy of the day to day peaceful living with a fellow human being. I say this because it is only by intrepidly going beyond the much-vaunted idealism and feelings of love that I managed to discover not only the guileful constraints that love inevitably imposes on both lover and loved, but also the dark underbelly of passions that love attempts to repress.

This ‘holding back’ can take many subtle or not-so subtle forms. Taking ‘space’, remaining aloof, being cool, feeling emotionally, intellectually or spiritually superior, detaching from or suppressing one’s feelings, accepting one’s lot, surrendering, withdrawing, and so on. Whilst the games played are many and varied, the end result is the same – staying as you are, denying the opportunity of change and missing out on the opportunity of investigating what is standing in the way of the changes you know are needed for an authentic intimacy to happen.

The risk associated with this type of ‘self’-investigation is that the subsequent change it evokes means that one is no longer the same person one was when one entered into the relationship and this could well cause consternation and disquiet in one’s companion. What pushed me on past this point was a genuine caring for my companion in that I did not want to continue to subject her to my graceless demands and my fickle moods – after all, it was I who wanted to live with her in utter peace and harmony and to demand that she aspire to do the same would have been to completely miss the point of actualism.

I was also reminded at the time of something I had written in the Glossary

Feeling — Physical sensibility other than sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell. The condition of being emotionally affected or committed; an emotion (of fear, hope, etc.). Emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies. A belief not based solely on reason; an attitude, a sentiment. Oxford Dictionary

Peter: The three ways a person can experience the world are: 1: cerebral (thoughts); 2: sensate (senses); 3. affective (feelings). The arising of instinctually-sourced feelings produces a hormonal chemical response in the body, which can lead to the false assumption that they are actual. Given that the base feelings are malice and sorrow (sadness, resentment, hate, depression, melancholy, loneliness, etc.) we desperately seek relief in the ‘good’ feelings (love, trust, compassion, togetherness, friendship, etc.). To live life as a ‘feeling being’ is to be forever tossed on a raging sea, hoping for an abatement to the storm. Finally, after a particularly fierce storm, one ‘ties up in port’ to sit life out in safety or putters around in the shallows, so as not to face another storm again. We are but victims of our impassioned feelings – but they can be eliminated. Feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts and, as such, we can free ourselves of their grip upon us.

Usually we divide emotions into groupings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and try either to repress or deny the bad ones – fear and aggression – while giving full vent and validity to the good ones – nurture and desire. Unfortunately this attempt to curb fear and aggression has had no success as is evidenced by the all the wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, corruption, suicide, despair and loneliness that is still endemic on the planet. Love and hate, compassion and selfishness, etc. come inseparably in pairs as is testified by the continual failure of humans to live together in anything remotely resembling peace and harmony. The Actual Freedom Trust Glossary

The ‘tie up in port’ bit particularly seemed appropriate for it is descriptive of what most regard as having a good relationship within the human condition – having found someone to ‘tie up in port’ with so you won’t be alone in old age.

*

Another recent event also shed some more light on this same issue of ‘tying up in port’. I had occasion to visit a former acquaintance from my spiritual days who lives on one of the many ‘sanctuaries’ that are dotted throughout the surrounding hills here. Whilst these sanctuaries take many forms, they have one thing in common – they serve as retreats or havens of shelter from the real world for the spiritually-impaired.

What struck me about the visit was that these people were all desperately seeking a feeling of security in their sanctuaries and that this grasping for security was a knee-jerk response to the fear that they were told – and believed – is associated with the evils of the ‘real-world’. Whilst this act of retreating from the world of people, things and events can produce ephemeral feelings of security, the act of dissociating from the world as-it-is only serves to strengthen their feelings of self-righteousness – typified by their continual blaming of other people, material things, everyday events or supernatural forces for being the cause of their own feelings of sorrow.

The particular person I visited was also of the age where ‘acceptance of what is’ had well and truly set in – spiritual-speak for the bitter-sweet resignation that inflicts many an old sailor when they are forced by advancing age to ‘tie up in port’. Again this observation reminded me not only of the serendipity of coming across Richard – someone who refused to stop seeking even when he had reached the pinnacle of the spiritual world – but also of my own refusal to settle for the usual spiritual game plan of retreating from life and ‘tying up in port’.

*

The last observation relates to the so-called festive season of Christmas that has recently come and gone. A conversation I recently had with someone about Christmas reminded me that even when I was a normal person in the real-world, i.e. well before I took on Eastern religious beliefs, I clearly saw the folly of the Christian ‘season of peace and goodwill’. Even then, I knew enough about on-going history of animosity and bloodshed between the various religious factions on the planet to know that when followers of one of the Christians sects pray for peace on earth they are really praying that everybody else become Christians like them in order that their own particular version of ‘peace on earth’ could prevail.

The clear seeing of this hypocrisy meant that I could not take part in the so-called celebrations of Christmas without feeling a hypocrite, and being a hypocrite, myself. Sincerity meant that I stopped partaking in the sham and also that I stopped keeping up the pretence with my children, for to do so would only be aiding and abetting in the perpetuation of eons-old religious beliefs, myths and fantasies.

The fervent passions and hopes of those who look to the heavens and pray for peace does nothing but shroud the facts as to why there has never been, and can never be, peace on earth between socially-indoctrinated and instinctually-driven human ‘beings’.

Well that’s it from me. Whilst I thought I would throw a few topics in the ring, there is no need to respond if nothing moves you.

16.1.2003

PETER: I thought I would write to the list about a few aspects of the human condition that became obvious to me in my day to day living over the past weeks.

GARY: I am glad you did. It was serendipity: I had just sat down to write a post on another topic of interest, and your mail appeared in the Inbox. So I decided to turn my attention to that instead.

PETER: Maybe you will post your topic sometime as well. I always have Vineeto and Richard to chat with about any issues that arise whereas for you, and others, this list may well be the only opportunity to have a sensible conversation on what are usually held to be sensitive matters.

*

PETER: As you would know from your own experience, it is one thing to read something that say Richard has said about some aspect of the human condition but it is another to confirm it as fact by your own observations of others. However a bona fide significance and life-changing consequences only come when you become attentive as to how that particular aspect of the human condition operates in you, as ‘you’, a thinking and feeling entity – be it as a feeling or as a compulsion, be it manifested either as a covert action or am overt action. In other words, it is only the decisive act of attentiveness, or ‘self’-awareness, of the human condition in operation, when combined with sincerity, is the ending of, i.e. the freedom from, that particular aspect of the human condition.

GARY: Yes, by attentiveness or ‘self’-awareness, the human brain is capable of changing radically...and changing decisively, forever. While reading the Actual Freedom writings is helpful, it is no substitute for the hands-on, practical experience gained by application of attentiveness to one’s affairs.

PETER: To be only interested in the actualism writings per se is to merely have an academic or philosophical (or theosophical) interest in a freedom from the human condition – whereas actually becoming free of the human condition requires the hands-on application of the actualism method, or as you put it – ‘the hands-on, practical experience gained by application of attentiveness to one’s affairs.’

Once one is firmly launched on the path, the writings then serve as a useful source of information, a map or help menu if you like, written by those who have trod the path before.

GARY: My personal experience is that, over time, it becomes easy to keep attentiveness running constantly, even during sleep. When I get off course, it is a relatively easy matter to get back to being happy and harmless.

PETER: As I remember it, the reason I started my Journal with the chapter on death is that the realization that physical death is the end – dead, finished, finito, kaput, no more –was the beginning of my being interested in being here. I’ll just post a bit to give the flavour of what this realization meant at the time –

[Peter]: ‘During my investigations into death over this last year, I have become aware that the most shocking thing for human beings is that we are able to contemplate our own death. It is amazing that, of all the animals on the planet, only we human beings, with our ability to think and reflect, know that we have a limited life span and, further, that we could die at any time. We know this, we can talk about it and think about it. We see other people and animals die, and we see our bodies aging and dying. We know that death is an inevitable fact. This is the fact of the situation, but we have avoided this fact largely by making ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What happens after death?’ into great religious, philosophical and scientific questions. Indeed, for many humans the pursuit of the answer to these meaningless questions is deemed to be the very meaning of life. The search for what happens after life becomes the point of life and the Search is endless. One is forever on the Path. One never arrives.

That always seemed some sort of perversity to me. All that the religious and spiritual meanings of life have offered us is that they point to life after death – that’s where it is really at! ‘When you die, then you can really live!’’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

What this realization meant was that I was no longer interested in the escapist, ‘let me out of here’, fantasies of the revered spiritual teachings and I began to be interested in how I was experiencing being here in the physical world – the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, right here in the place I am in now, right now in this moment which is the only moment I can ever physically experience.

This starting to be interested in being here is the beginning of attentiveness because the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ comes naturally when one is sincerely interested in being here. From this interest then comes a fascination with being here which, over the course of time, inevitably leads to the lived experience of not being able to be anywhere but here, and it never being any other time but now.

*

PETER: Because I am a seasoned practicing actualist, nowadays most of my observations serve as reminders of how much I have changed since starting this business – of how much of the human condition I have become free of over the years. I do like these reminders because they clearly point to an inevitable end to a process that, whilst seeming so daunting at the start, has proved to be surprisingly straightforward.

GARY: I like the word ‘straightforward’ here. There is nothing mysterious about it at all. The process is no longer daunting to me either.

PETER: And yet I suspect it is the straightforward nature of actualism that is the most daunting aspect for those who favour acceptance of their lot in life and who fear a commitment to the radical change that is necessary to become happy and harmless.

GARY: While this process ebbs and flows, being happy and harmless seems like the simplest thing in the world. While many things may be complicated, for instance a particular vexing human dilemma at work, or a mechanical problem to solve, complications mainly seem to arise in the emotional domain. When emotions and feelings are minimized, life is so simple it is amazing. The freedom that comes from this is unparalleled.

PETER: It’s good to hear you say this as well. I take being virtually free from malice and sorrow for granted nowadays even though being almost free from these passions is unparalleled within the human condition. And what I especially like is that while a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow is unparalleled it is in no way preciously unique as we can both swap notes about a common down-to-earth experience based on the application of the same straightforward method.

*

PETER: The first observation I had was about ‘relationships’ – the man-woman, living-together type. I was laying back in bed with Vineeto the other night, enjoying a particular intimate moment, when I realized the intimacy I was enjoying was the result of going into the relationship fully, of not holding back, of not settling for anything less than the very best. This continually ‘leaning forward’ rather than holding back was the only way I came to discover what was preventing me from experiencing the exquisite intimacy of the day to day peaceful living with a fellow human being. I say this because it is only by intrepidly going beyond the much-vaunted idealism and feelings of love that I managed to discover not only the guileful constraints that love inevitably imposes on both lover and loved, but also the dark underbelly of passions that love attempts to repress.

GARY: Actual intimacy is not at all like ‘real world’ intimacy that I have experienced before. In Actual intimacy, there is no demand or need placed on the partner to the relationship, so one cannot be ‘vulnerable’, in the ordinary sense of that word.

PETER: Yeah. The usual advice is that one needs to be open to the other, ‘open to love’, and that in turn means being more emotionally vulnerable. If one is really emotionally vulnerable then one is not only open to feeling love but also to feeling unloved, to feeling jealousy, to feeling not nurtured, to feeling neglected, to feeling wounded, to feeling resentment, to wanting to wound, and so on.

The traditional reaction when one is flooded by unwanted or undesirable feelings is to want to become invulnerable which usually results in withdrawing, closing down or cutting off – of some sort, to some degree. And, of course, if one feels particularly emotionally wounded then a psychological reaction known as dissociation can result.

Again I’ll post a piece from my Journal which describes how I leapt onto the path of dissociation – a journey that lasted some 17 years as it turned out.

[Peter]: ‘Over a period of four tumultuous months, my marriage crumbled, my wife left me, taking the kids with her, and joined the local Rajneesh commune! I was devastated. My life was totally shattered. If any warning signs were obvious I had either missed or avoided them. It was gut-wrenchingly agonising, as my whole world fell apart. I remember looking at old men sleeping on park benches and thinking that this was my future now that I was alone in life, with no one to care for me and no-one to love. One dark night I picked up one of Rajneesh’s books, and Bingo, here was hope. There was a ‘flash’ in my heart that I was to experience again and again, particularly when in his presence. I was in love! I had, at last, discovered the meaning of life... here was a Sage who knew the ‘Grand Scheme’ of things – and I was off, unhesitatingly down the Spiritual Path.’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Living Together’

It’s fascinating when you begin to discover that the universally-revered and sacrosanct spiritual teachings are naught but ancient fairy tales based on the ‘wisdom’ of dissociating from the material world. For the spiritualist, these other-worldly tales and other-worldly feelings provide a psychological and psychic haven – the desperate urge to not want to be here triggers an equally desperate urge to be somewhere else, a retreat into fantasy based on denial and dissociation.

For an actualist, the solution to becoming free of the emotional roller coaster is the simple act of being attentive to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive. This attentiveness firstly withers away at any denial or dissociation that is happening resulting in the gradual unveiling of the sensual delights of the actual world, which in turn leads to increasing experiences of an actual intimacy with all of one’s fellow human beings.

GARY: There is no exclusivity to a relationship and one can be actually intimate with anyone, not just one’s partner.

PETER: Whilst this non-exclusivity can be very threatening to those who seek and demand exclusivity, for an actualist every-other-body is a fellow human being – not a lover, a soul mate, a compatriot or co-conspirator, nor an alien, an enemy, an opponent or a rival. And, as if this were not enough, living with a fellow human being with whom you share the sensual pleasures of innocent sexual play is particularly delightful and especially intimate.

GARY: What you refer to as the ‘leaning forward’ can really only take place when one has sufficiently examined beliefs and passions to be free from their paralyzing grip.

PETER: Yes. The leaning forward I was referring to is the continual state of attentiveness as to what is standing in the way of becoming free of the human condition.

And yet, as I think about it further, I had to do a lot of ‘leaning forward’ to even get to the stage where I made being happy and harmless the number one priority in life. There is no bigger ‘leaning forward’ required than to firstly consider that there might be something possible in human experience that is beyond Enlightenment and to then be willing to completely abandon the spiritual path and head off in the opposite direction in order to access it.

In order to keep this post from getting too long I will round this off here and finish in part two.

16.1.2003

PETER: This ‘holding back’ can take many subtle or not-so subtle forms. Taking ‘space’, remaining aloof, being cool, feeling emotionally, intellectually or spiritually superior, detaching from or suppressing one’s feelings, accepting one’s lot, surrendering, withdrawing, and so on. Whilst the games played are many and varied, the end result is the same – staying as you are, denying the opportunity of change and missing out on the opportunity of investigating what is standing in the way of the changes you know are needed for an authentic intimacy to happen.

GARY: Yes, I have played all those games and more. For an authentic actual intimacy to happen, one needs essentially to stop being a ‘self’. A live-in relationship is an excellent place to see ‘me’ in action. ‘I’ like to create an image of myself and put forth only what ‘I’ want others to see of ‘me’. In a close, live-in relationship, those blinders are off, and the image-maker is exposed.

PETER: As an actualist I find it telling that spiritualists all still play these games in their relationships with their partners – the ‘who is the most spiritually superior’ seemingly being the most common power play. The traditional way they avoid playing these games is by becoming celibate – there being none so superior as those who refuse to stoop so low as to dabble in the trials of domestic life, let alone risk succumbing to the ‘evils of the flesh’.

It takes avoidance and vigilance to maintain a ‘self’-righteous and aloof persona – whereas it takes nothing more, and nothing less, than a sincerity and attentiveness to incrementally expose all that stands in the way of being able to live with one’s fellow human beings in peace and harmony.

*

PETER: The risk associated with this type of ‘self’-investigation is that the subsequent change it evokes means that one is no longer the same person one was when one entered into the relationship and this could well cause consternation and disquiet in one’s companion. What pushed me on past this point was a genuine caring for my companion in that I did not want to continue to subject her to my graceless demands and my fickle moods – after all, it was I who wanted to live with her in utter peace and harmony and to demand that she aspire to do the same would have been to completely miss the point of actualism.

GARY: And reading these words it is good to be reminded that moods always create a demand and are always fickle. ‘My’ moods are after all what made it impossible for me to live in peace and harmony with others in the past. Another thing has arisen with the change that I have experienced: a genuine helpfulness and consideration for my partner.

PETER: And a sincere caring for one’s fellow human beings is what is revealed.

*

PETER: The ‘tie up in port’ bit particularly seemed appropriate for it is descriptive of what most regard as having a good relationship within the human condition – having found someone to ‘tie up in port’ with so you won’t be alone in old age.

GARY: It certainly is nice to have a relationship with someone. And I have been with my present partner now longer than I have ever been with anyone else, so in many ways this is an adventure. Now being firmly middle-aged, and approaching the ‘retirement’ years, it is fascinating (some might say horrifying) to observe the aging process both in myself and in her. And there is this tendency, which you noted, to cling ever more tightly to my partner as the years advance and crave the security that a stable, settled relationship can bring. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but as I have observed this tendency in myself I have concluded that it is none other than instinctual programming and all-too-human drive for security and stability, reflective of an underlying fear and insecurity. In short, it is ‘me’ again seeking safe harbour and support.

PETER: One of the most significant features about being an actualist is that it doesn’t involve blindly following, or senselessly rebelling against, some cultural or spiritual set of morals or ethics as to what is good and bad or what is right and wrong.

Whatever the situation one finds oneself in right now is the situation one needs to be attentive to – actualism is as straightforward as that. And whatever belief, feeling or instinctual passion that is preventing you from being happy and harmless – i.e. preventing you from living with your fellow human beings in peace and harmony – will be revealed in the glare of sincere unbiased attentiveness.

*

PETER: The particular person I visited was also of the age where ‘acceptance of what is’ had well and truly set in – spiritual-speak for the bitter-sweet resignation that inflicts many an old sailor when they are forced by advancing age to ‘tie up in port’. Again this observation reminded me not only of the serendipity of coming across Richard – someone who refused to stop seeking even when he had reached the pinnacle of the spiritual world – but also of my own refusal to settle for the usual spiritual game plan of retreating from life and ‘tying up in port’.

GARY: I well remember in my ‘believing’ days, going through a particularly stormy and troubling patch, and the one thing that I seemed to fixate on at the time was that I needed to get away and join a spiritual commune of some sort or another. There was some type of Buddhist retreat center in Boston that others told me was just the place for me, and this started to sound good. But as I have had such deplorable experiences with any type of cloistering eventually, in a few short days, the urge to go tramping off and joining up faded. I only mention this vis-a-vis relating to ‘this act of retreating from the world of people, things and events’, with the pay-off of the imagined feelings of security.

PETER: Yes. When Mohan Rajneesh fled the U.S. and the Rajneesh commune in Oregon collapsed I remember hearing one of the leaders saying something like ‘Praise Allah but don’t forget to tether your camel’. All of my former spiritual colleagues seem to have adopted this attitude for they are all busy ‘tethering their camel’ – settling down, buying houses, building swimming pools, having children, swelling bank balances, stashing away nest eggs and so on. Some are doing this by going back to desperately competing in the ‘real’ world, whilst others are using their spiritual wiles by preying on the gullible, becoming therapists, pseudo-psychologists, psychic healers, snake-oil sellers, shaman, gurus, and the like. And just as it is in the real world, in the spiritual world the most willful, most powerful and most cunning are generally those who rise to the top of the heap.

GARY: The ‘tying up in port’ syndrome can happen in a number of ways. But essentially it consists of the human drive to form protective groupings of various sorts.

PETER: Yep. Whilst this instinctual drive was essential for the survival of homo sapiens in the grim early millennia, nowadays to remain enslaved to this same passion is to remain imprisoned within the human condition of malice and sorrow. To feel oneself to be a Rajneeshee, a Krishnamurtiite, a Buddhist, a Christian, a God in one’s own right or whatever means that one does nothing but aid and abet the competition and conflict between the multitudinous religious and spiritual groups on the planet. Similarly to feel oneself to be an American, an Australian, a Russian, an Indian or whatever means that one does nothing but aid and abet the competition and conflict between the multitudinous cultural and nationalistic groupings on the planet.

In short, to remain enslaved to being a social identity of any sort sucks.

GARY: All of this is a most inferior substitute for living in the munificence of the present moment.

PETER: Yes, a munificence which is only revealed in a pure consciousness experience when ‘I’ am temporarily absent – or lived as an ongoing experience when actually free from the human condition in toto.

1.2.2003

PETER: Hi Gary,

Just a comment on a few topics from our previous conversation –

What this realization meant was that I was no longer interested in the escapist, ‘let me out of here’, fantasies of the revered spiritual teachings and I began to be interested in how I was experiencing being here in the physical world – the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, right here in the place I am in now, right now in this moment which is the only moment I can ever physically experience.

This starting to be interested in being here is the beginning of attentiveness because the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ comes naturally when one is sincerely interested in being here. From this interest then comes a fascination with being here which, over the course of time, inevitably leads to the lived experience of not being able to be anywhere but here, and it never being any other time but now.

And yet I suspect it is the straightforward nature of actualism that is the most daunting aspect for those who favour acceptance of their lot in life and who fear a commitment to the radical change that is necessary to become happy and harmless.

GARY: Yes, and that radical change is taking place with each moment one is being here in this actual place. The experience of actuality is in such sharp contrast to the ‘normal’, feeling-fed, affective experiencing of the world that it is easy to discern. However, it takes practice in my own personal experience. Each time I am aware that I am day-dreaming, emoting, wandering, fleeing, withdrawing, etc, etc, an alert attentiveness returns me to this precious and delectable moment and the actual, tangible world as experienced through the senses comes rushing back in. The vibrant, lustrous quality of sensory experience is, to me, the chief hallmark of actuality. The finely articulated, pristine quality of awareness in which, as I have said before, the most mundane objects become fascinating in their own right, is the excellent quality of being here. This excellent quality of actuality, this unbridled experience of sensuality, triggers a momentous change in the brain. With each repeated experience like this, a radical change is taking place. This is no superficial re-arranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic, so to speak. I am not radically changing because I now appreciate Italian opera besides the German. There is a complete and total break with that which is near and dear to ‘me’.

PETER: Just a further comment, simply in order to swap notes as it were.

Although I have had numerous PCEs during my years of being a practicing actualist, I always maintain my first PCE as my lodestone or my goal. This PCE still stands out as being the most outstanding and I think this is because its onset was totally unexpected and therefore the contrast between the actual world and the normal human-experienced world of grim reality was startlingly obvious. During this first experience I was not aware that the experience was temporary – it was as if I had been magically transported to another world, one of unbelievable purity, perfection and physical vitality. Although I was very much aware that ‘I’ and all my worries and passions had also magically disappeared, I was also unconcerned, and unaware, that the experience would eventually fade and ‘I’ would inevitably reappear.

For me, this first time experience is still outstanding because, unlike all of the subsequent experiences, I was naively unaware that the experience was temporary – unaware that it would end. Nowadays the contrast between a PCE and my normal state – being virtually free of malice and sorrow – is nowhere near as great as it was during my first PCE and I have tended to spend a good deal of my PCE times taking the opportunity of exploring the human condition from the outside as it were.

This almost casual wandering in and out of PCEs, combined with a far less substantial ‘self’ has sometimes meant that the distinction between my normal experiencing and a pure consciousness experiencing becomes so blurred as to be almost indistinct. What always alerts me to the distinction, however, is that when ‘I’ am present it is as though there is a thin veil between ‘me’ and the purity, perfection and physical vitality of the actual world – usually a slightly grey veil given that sorrow is the predominant human affliction.

Because of this, I always maintain my first substantive PCE as my lodestone – because that experience was so unexpected, and therefore so unique, that there was neither reason nor opportunity for ‘me’ and my guile to claim it as ‘mine’. It’s just my way of avoiding straying off the path – of maintaining a sincere intent and avoiding the trap of falling into delusion.

*

PETER: It’s good to hear you say this as well. I take being virtually free from malice and sorrow for granted nowadays even though being almost free from these passions is unparalleled within the human condition. And what I especially like is that while a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow is unparalleled it is in no way preciously unique as we can both swap notes about a common down-to-earth experience based on the application of the same straightforward method.

GARY: I cannot say that I ‘take for granted’ this freedom. Perhaps I still feel like a relative newcomer to this ... after all, you have been at this much longer than I have. There seems to be nothing ‘granted’ about it ... it has occurred with much hard work, and I feel I am reaping the rewards. Maybe I am not understanding your meaning here.

PETER: The reason I say I take being virtually free from malice and sorrow for granted these days is that it is extremely rare that I am not happy and it is extremely rare that I am of harm to others. Again I use a PCE as my benchmark. I know from these experiences that when a human body has no social/instinctual identity whatsoever ‘inside’ it – no ‘I’ or ‘me’ to rule the roost – then a human body has neither sorrow nor malice, exactly as a tree or cloud is neither sad or angry.

Having now done sufficient work and expended sufficient effort to reduce the substance of ‘me’ to a point where any of the myriad feelings of malice and sorrow almost never occur ‘I’ now take virtual freedom for granted. ‘I’ have become redundant as it were, ‘I’ have done my job, ‘I’ have swept the cupboard as clean as I can of the morals, ethics, values, beliefs, psittacisms and passions that make up ‘me’. It’s high time for ‘me’ to finally let go of the controls as it were and exit stage left.

In a PCE it is patently obvious that there is neither malice nor sorrow in the actual world – that the actual world is already-always peaceful and perfect, always has been, always will be, is right now. As the actualism method begins to gather its own momentum, one edges closer and closer to living this peacefulness and perfection – not as an ‘I’ feeling sanctimoniously peaceful, but as an on-going understanding that only ‘I’ stand in the way of the ‘self’-less sensual experiencing of the peacefulness and perfection of the actual world. This is why I take being virtually free from malice and sorrow for granted these days.

Having said that I realize that there are those who will read these words and who will want to experience such peacefulness before they have done all they can to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Those who do so will risk following the traditional path of denial and fantasy and, instead of becoming actually free of the human condition, will opt for the traditional ‘self’-aggrandizing escape from grim reality – the delusion of Enlightenment.

As Richard says, the only risk in using the actualism method is that one might well become Enlightened – and avoiding this is where the pure intent arising out of one’s own pure consciousness experience of the perfection and purity of the actual world comes to the fore.

Well that’s it from me. Nice to chat with you again.

Actualism Homepage

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Peter’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.