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Peter: The key to freedom from the Human Condition is the
unique capacity of the human brain to be aware of its own functioning. Human beings are thus capable of being aware of both what they are
thinking and what they are feeling – feelings being the emotional-mental interpretation of the instinctual passions in operation. This
ability is commonly known as self-awareness.
In recent decades, this capacity has also been complemented by the scientific
studies of the neuro-biology of the human brain that are heralding the beginning of an empirical understanding of the genetically-encoded
instinctual passions. These scientific studies, firmly based on empirical observations, make nonsense of the traditional denial of the
existence of instinctual animal passions in humans and the ancient belief that we are born ‘innocent’. |
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‘Self’-awareness is possible in human beings in
that we have the ability to develop and cultivate an awareness of both the social conditioning of beliefs, morals and ethics one has been
instilled with since birth and the feelings and emotions that result from the chemical surges of the instinctual passions in operation.
What one is ultimately attempting to do is to achieve a pure ‘self’-less state
and this involves observing, investigating and eliminating ‘who’ one thinks one is and ‘who’ one feels oneself to be – a radical
procedure, to say the least. This particular aspect of awareness is not a natural phenomenon and needs to be actively cultivated and
persistently practiced in order to ensure success. As such, one needs to proceed with a bloody-minded persistence the likes of which one has
not mustered before. To do so, one needs firstly to establish a simple, unswerving and primary aim in life – a sincere intent to become as
happy and harmless, as one was in a pure consciousness experience, for 24 hrs. a day, every day. The method of becoming happy and
harmless, 24 hrs. a day, every day, is both devastatingly simple and ruthlessly efficient. One needs to continually ask oneself the question
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How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?
The continuous asking of this question is the key to cultivating
and developing ‘self’-awareness but it does require persistence and perseverance in order to ensure success …
The essential method is to undertake a total investigation into
anything that is preventing one from being happy and harmless now – after all, if one’s aim is to be happy then one needs to be happy now,
not at some time in the future, nor some time in the past. The question to ask oneself is – ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being
alive?’ This moment is, after all, the only moment I can experience being happy.
Any emotion such as anger, frustration or boredom that is
preventing my happiness now, has to be traced back to its cause – the exact incident, thought, expectation or disappointment. At the root of
this emotion is inevitably found a socially-instilled belief or an instinctual passion. The awareness, investigation and understanding of these
morals, ethics, beliefs and the animal instincts ‘in action’ actually weakens their influence on one’s thoughts and behaviour. The
process, if followed diligently and obsessively, will ultimately cause them to disappear completely. The idea being, of course, to eliminate
the cause of one’s unhappiness, so that one can experience life at the optimum, now. If one is happy now, then good. One can then ‘raise
the bar’ to feeling very good, then excellent, then … perfect.
The method soon presents success incrementally, as freedom from
beliefs and instinctual passions is indeed a freedom that results in increased peace and harmony for oneself and in one’s relating
with one’s fellow human beings. The method does bring up fear and resistance, because one is dismantling one’s very ‘self’, those very
beliefs and passions one holds so dearly.
It sounds so simple, but very few people are even willing to take
a small step along the way. Most people would seemingly like their life to be better, but faced with the prospect of actually having to do
something themselves, or having to change the way they are, they soon sneak away, only to re-run the old ancient ‘tried and failed’
methods.
Of course, the major fear is that it will work and ‘I’ will
‘be’ no more.
This method of ‘self’-awareness is both concise and down-to-earth in that it
concentrates one’s awareness on this moment in time – this very moment, right now, in this very place. The whole emphasis is on ‘how am I
experiencing myself now ’? This is not to deny that one doesn’t have a goal and that this goal is in the future – to be happy and
harmless, 24hrs. a day, every day. It does take time to work through each of the beliefs, morals, ethics, psittacisms and instinctual passions
– to thoroughly investigate them.
