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Vineeto’s Correspondence on Mailing List C Correspondent No. 15
RESPONDENT: Hi Peter, I am in. I have had enough of the lack of results I have got from either normal life or the spiritual. What you, Vineeto, Devika and Richard have said makes a whole lot of sense, so I am ready to take the leap, boots and all!!!! :-) VINEETO: You have written to Peter, but I said to him, let me reply. It is such a joy when someone gets encouraged by our stories to try out a new way for himself. Also you understood that it is only you who can do something about yourself, and that is a very good starting position! And yes, it is a ‘boots and all’ adventure, it is about turning one’s head inside out and upside down, it is re-wiring one’s brain. Slowly, slowly you come to question everything you have ever learned and on the way you are finding out the extent of what you have been taught! So many ideas and ‘truths’ that I had taken for granted, some which have come with the mother’s milk, or that I learned in school or from other ‘reliable’ authorities, would, with relentless investigation, turn out to be mere assumptions, beliefs, opinions and not at all facts. So you can brace yourself for many a surprise and, as I say, the carpet under your feet will disappear many times. RESPONDENT: Where do I start??? VINEETO: Yes, where to start! How Peter started, after he understood that Richard had something valuable to offer – he went there, for six month, every day, and sat in Richard’s lounge-room to absorb this so strange, unheard-of, and bewildering way to see and experience the world. He learned from the spoken word, but also he was reading Richard’s journal at least a dozen times. There is definitely no transmission happening, no energy-work involved. It is possible to understand the flavour of this actual world by words, and there are about a million of words available now. Alan has found Richard via search on the internet and digs himself out of the Human Condition by reading every bit of Richard’s writing and correspondence over and over again, as well as Peter’s journal and our conversations here on the mailing-list. Personal presence is not required at all – a remarkable and vital difference to the spiritual transmission of ‘Wisdom’ and the Master’s ‘Energy’. I spent a lot of time with Peter and had some resistance at the start – being a devout sannyasin then – but was exposed to Peter’s stories and discoveries day by day. Some of the bewildering news would stick, some of it would make sense and then – the first successes became apparent from investigating into my own psyche, my own behaviour, my own emotions... You can’t sit in our lounge room listening to stories, but you can read them. Read and read and re-read. Until something in your brain starts shifting, clicking, doubting the old, understanding the ‘actual’, and you will start seeing and sometimes experiencing what Richard means by ‘actually being here’. Whenever your head starts fuming, remember that you are tackling 20 odd years of conditioning, of looking at things from a certain background, packed with feelings, intuition and beliefs. And not only are you investigating your own behaviour and conditioning, but you are dismantling the whole of the Human Condition, which means, everything that everybody has believed up to now, Ancient Wisdom that has been passed down the ages. It is not a small thing we are doing. It is a true pioneer’s job, the adventure of a lifetime – being one of the first to discover virgin territory, an Actual Freedom from the Human Condition. The other thing that one can do is write. We have an Actual Freedom mailing-list, as you probably know,
and particularly Alan, Peter and I have written quite a few letters about our adventures in moving on the path to the actual world and leaving the
‘real’ world of malice and sorrow behind, including all the various fears, doubts, qualms and headaches that are par for the course in this
adventure. You might find something interesting in the archives and may feel inclined to share about your particular questions and investigations.
How to get on? Click on the The first thing I had to do after 17 years of spiritual conditioning was to switch my brain back on. I delighted in using my intelligence again, started doubting the old, used scrutiny and discrimination to slowly question everything that I had taken for granted wisdom. What a gullible person I had been, you could have told me any fairy-story of astrology and invisible energies, channelling and chakras, and I was ready to believe it all! Investigating and using my intelligence again, I felt like being back in High school or University, where intellect and intelligence are being trained, where it was o.k. to think, where I learned about facts – though even many of those so-called facts later turned out to be mere assumptions, disguised as scientific theories. I re-discovered the joy of discrimination, of relying on myself instead of authority, of using ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ instead of moralistic appraisals. And then I encountered fear – fear to leave the familiar fold – my peers, my sannyasin friends and acquaintances, the women’s club with their particular beliefs and feelings, family-sentiments, love-dreams. Most of all, I was fearful to question the authority of Osho, of God, of the divine plan behind it all, and the belief in authority as such. Suddenly I had to realize and acknowledge that I am alone, standing on my own two feet, nobody is there who knows ‘the truth’ and no all-caring and all-powerful ‘Existence’ is ‘taking care of me’. Wow, what a bummer – and then, what a freedom. I can actually do what I want, think sensibly, take care of myself without the concept of any Almighty God and enjoy life, even if everybody else chooses to be miserable for a million and one reason. If you think that the choice where to start with un-conditioning yourself is too big, you can start with something simple like the weather. Weather is something so obviously outside of our control, and yet almost everyone I meet complains about the weather. What a delight, when it is blue sky with vivid colours, what a delight when it rains, wetting the ground, tinkering raindrops on the roof. If the weather annoys you, there is something to look at, maybe it is some emotion surfacing about something completely unrelated to the weather or some conviction being tickled that makes you wobble.
This is the core sentence and the method to all of Richard’s discoveries, the key to the actual world. With this sentence you can take apart the whole of your psyche, bit by bit, digging deeper and deeper into your unconscious. Whenever you are not happy now, there is something to look at. And every moment not happy, or not investigating into the reasons of unhappiness, is a wasted moment. There is only now, only this moment; yesterday is but a memory, tomorrow but a fantasy. If I waste this moment of being alive, because I am complaining about something, or I am worried or half-hearted, it is a wasted moment of my life. It is so wonderfully simple, so obvious – and yet, with all our conditioning, beliefs, emotions and instincts in action, it is very difficult to understand and actualize. But now, with this method, you can examine and investigate everything that keeps you from being happy now. Richard has written a whole chapter about this vital issue of ‘this moment being alive’, you find it
on his web-site: RESPONDENT: [quote]: Argument implies a desire to win, strengthens egotism, and ties us to the belief in the idea of ‘a self, a being, a living being, and a person’... Hui Neng VINEETO: The spiritual people all tell you not to argue, which also means, don’t question, don’t doubt, don’t find out for yourself, believe them, in short – don’t think. I like discussion. I am glad there is a discussion happening on the list, people are talking about their beliefs, in whatever way, it is coming out in the open. So I have nothing against argument, or the desire to win. On the path to freedom one has got to use every tool one can find, be it desire to win, bloody-mindedness, rebellion, joy of discovery, or whatever incentive to move on you find in yourself. Richard talks about ‘pure intent’ and I have found that a very useful measure. Pure intent is keeping my goal in sight, cleaning myself up not for power or personal gain but for my own and everybody else’s happiness, my own peace-on-earth and the possible peace of everybody else. Intent is born out of the peak-experience and one’s memory of it. It will be helpful to remember and maybe write down one’s last or most outstanding peak-experience in order to have a constant reference point as to what one wants to achieve... Well, I think that’s enough for you to start off with. I am eager to hear how you are going. With your permission I would like to forward this letter to the Actual Freedom mailing-list, because I think it is of interest and use for everybody. Talk to you there. It has been a pleasure to talk to you.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The
Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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How am I experiencing this moment of being
alive?
