Actual Freedom – Audio-Taped Dialogues

Q(1): What is trust, to you?

R: I have no trust at all: to trust someone – anyone at all – is to invite betrayal (or what is perceived to be betrayal by the one who is doing the trusting) from the one who is trusted. Also, to trust someone is to impose a demand upon them that they may not be able to live up to (or want to) ... and I never do that. It is the same with expectations ... to have expectations of other people is to set yourself up for disappointment again and again. Etymologically, trust – a covenant with the truth – is in the same category as faith – loyalty to the truth – and both are aligned with belief. Belief means fervently wishing to be true. There is not much difference ... perhaps trust is used more in spiritual circles, whereas faith and belief are more aligned with the religious ... as a generalisation. If one looks to the popular dictionary definition there is very little difference. Trust seems to have more solid connotations than faith – to the spiritual aspirant, who scorns religion and all its trappings – yet, essentially they amount to the same. They all give rise to hope. Hope, the antidote to despair, is what all people live on. Living in hope – trusting that ‘The Truth’ will bring release – is a poor substitute for the living purity of the perfection of the actual.

Q: Hope is always in the future ... it is a way of escaping.

R: The mind is a fertile breeding ground for fantasies and hallucinations; if one backs it up with hope, trust, belief and faith then anything weird can eventuate. Instead, make full use of a confidence born out of the peak experience; the surety that comes from a solid knowing ... an irrefutable knowing, not a flight of fancy or some religious epiphany or spiritual visionary occurrence.

Q(1): What part can realisations play?

R: A realisation is not always a fact; realisations can be a stepping-stone to evince a fact. A person has an existing mind-set and a realisation is a way of fitting whatever we discuss into that real-world paradigm.

Q(1): Yes, I can’t go beyond that at each step.

R: Given the grip that the pre-existing mind-set has on one’s reality, a realisation is a way of accommodating a new concept. Then maybe a week, a fortnight or a month later a practical actualisation occurs and that particular realisation has been the preparation ground for that consummation to happen. The realisation creates a preparedness in the old mind-set to receive the actuality.

One of the biggest worries is that one will lose all sense of direction and become like a leaf blowing in the wind.

Q(1): I experience it as skating around on ice in absolute terror with nothing fixed ... the ground ...

Q: Skating on thin ice?

Q(1): Yes ... or standing on thin ice.

R: One can experience the ground of one’s being – the basis of ‘me’ – becoming as quicksand. One does not know where to place oneself, orientate oneself, as the very ground beneath becomes as shifting sand.

Q(1): I can relate to that.

R: This is where one can rely upon this confidence born out of the experience of perfection.

Q(1): Sometimes there are things coming in so quickly; sometimes there is so much there, so much happening that there is a ‘Wow!’, there is a ‘This is excellent’. No sooner do I feel I’ve tapped something than the next thing is there to strike me where I think ‘My God what else is going to happen!’ Essentially my mind is operating in a way where I’ve never seen it so clearly.

R: This is a prime example of pure intent operating. This engenders a reliability to back up that confidence. One apprehends that, ultimately, nothing can go wrong – in the universal sense, that is. When one knowingly steps onto the path of actual freedom, carried along by the pure intent born of the peak experience ... when one extends oneself for the sake of the best for oneself, for humankind and for the universe, then all will be well. There is no need for trust whatsoever ... with its requisite loyalty to a psychic adumbration called The Truth’. Neither is faith and belief to play a part, giving consolation and hope to the metaphysical aspirant. The universe is here with one all the way, provided one does not falter in resolve and application, and success is assured. One is not on one’s own in this matter. You do not have to do it all by yourself. You have the best help you can get: all the help in the universe.

And that is enormous.