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Peter’s Correspondence on Mailing List B Correspondent No 20
RESPONDENT: What amazes me is that very few people take into consideration what enlightenment, ego-lessness, emptiness means in terms of other people. May be I’ll feel this and that, experience this and that, but like my Dad used to say: ‘What good is it, if I don’t benefit from your wisdom?’ (He’d use that at the end of just about any argument I had with him and it really enraged me back then, but today I wonder. I actually think he’s right.) So what about that? I find that just about the most challenging thing of all. PETER: My father’s only words of advice to me were ‘it doesn’t matter what you are in life, or what you do – just be happy’. Of course, he didn’t offer any advice as to how to be happy for he didn’t know, but his words did stick with me. He had fought for God and country in the jungles during WW2, had provided for wife and 2 kids and was a good community member, but was dead by age 45 – so his whole life was involved in doing his male duty for others, both socially and instinctually. However, I always suspected his advice essentially came out of his war experiences for there was a touch of ‘get it while you can, life is short’ about his words. I always suspected the 60’s and 70’s peace movement that blossomed amongst the children of those who fought, suffered and died in WW2 received covert support from some parents who endorsed the passionate drive for an end to the endless cycle of wars, conflicts, recrimination, retribution and suffering. It’s interesting that the peace movement should have been be sucked into a spiritual movement where all earthly existence is upheld as essential suffering and the solution to conflict and unhappiness is taught to be a withdrawal from the physical world and the physical body – a turning inside into a metaphysical, feeling-only world of ancient fairy tales, beliefs in Gods and an ultimate peace only after death. Eastern religion and wisdom has been around for over 3,000 years with billions of followers and millions of ardent practitioners and has done bugger all good for people on the planet. The East is a cesspool of repression, suppression, bigotry, conflict, superstition, renunciation, corruption, deceit, pious righteousness, etc., exactly as the West, and so much of this appalling misery is the direct result of following ancient wisdom and religious belief. We would do well to learn from the failures of the past – to have the courage to free ourselves of the dissolute fallacious wisdom of the Ancient Ones and to set about the pioneering work of becoming actually free of the encumbering Human Condition we find ourselves entrapped in. T’is the most challenging urgent enterprise on the planet and, as is evident and readily apparent from one’s pure consciousness experiences, ‘self’-sacrifice – both ego and soul – is the most worthwhile contribution one can make to actualizing peace on earth.
Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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