Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

September 22 2005

RESPONDENT: Read with interest all of the posts from the last 23 days.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list ... more than a few of all those posts are from spiritualists gratuitously giving of their most irreplaceable asset (their time) so as to provide a practical demonstration as to why the ‘Tried and True’ is actually the ‘tried and failed’.

RESPONDENT: Wondering about the actualist experience of physical illness and if there is a lessened susceptibility to same based on heightened sensory awakeness.

RICHARD: If, by that, you mean is the immune system is able to operate at an optimum efficiency level due to the absence of stress then ... yes.

RESPONDENT: I do not have the same degree of mental acuity as others posting here but respectfully submit this question nonetheless.

RICHARD: Ha ... if by mental acuity you are referring to what it takes to be an intellectualist, a rationalist, and so on, then you need have no cause for any concern whatsoever as I am a high-school drop-out/a boy from the farm.

Put succinctly: actualism is experiential ... pure and simple.

September 22 2005

RESPONDENT: Wondering about the actualist experience of physical illness and if there is a lessened susceptibility to same based on heightened sensory awakeness.

RICHARD: If, by that, you mean is the immune system able to operate at an optimum efficiency level due to the absence of stress then ... yes.

RESPONDENT: I do not have the same degree of mental acuity as others posting here but respectfully submit this question nonetheless.

RICHARD: Ha ... if by mental acuity you are referring to what it takes to be an intellectualist, a rationalist, and so on, then you need have no cause for any concern whatsoever as I am a high-school drop-out/a boy from the farm. Put succinctly: actualism is experiential ... pure and simple.

RESPONDENT: I lack mental acuity meaning that I lack the ability to perceive the sharpest details. A brain flaw.

RICHARD: You lack the ability to perceive the sharpest details with ... with what?

RESPONDENT: I go forward. I was reflecting on the state of malice that exists around me. The malice seems unintentional.

RICHARD: Both malice and sorrow are, at root, involuntary aspects of ‘me’ ... behind all active vibes (to use a colloquialism) lie the psychic currents, or energies, which is where the real power-play takes place.

RESPONDENT: I was in a meeting on low income housing issues for the elderly and realized that malice was being distributed by those with a lot of money, because they could not shift their thinking to embrace a solution outside what is already known to not work. Is this malice really ... theirs or mine?

RICHARD: With practice one can usually ascertain just where a particular occurrence of malice is coming from ... initially it is difficult to discern and one does need to be scrupulously honest with oneself lest all occasions get duck-shoved onto someone else.

Sincerity is the key to unlocking such self-honesty.

RESPONDENT: It did not seem intentional. It just existed as an impasse between us. Does awareness provide any lubrication for improving a situation between two parties?

RICHARD: You may find the attentiveness expressed in the following provides for a felicity/ innocuity that far exceeds any social lubrication:

• [Richard]: ‘Before applying the actualism method – the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – it is essential for success to grasp the fact that this very moment which is happening now is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All one gets by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here; it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if one misses it this time around, hey presto, one has another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.

What ‘I’ did, all those years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective way to be able to enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive each moment again (I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). It does take some doing to start off with but, as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it becomes progressively easier to enjoy and appreciate being here each moment again. One begins by asking, each moment again, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?

Note: asking how one is experiencing this moment of being alive is not the actualism method; consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is. And this is because the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself.

This perpetual enjoyment and appreciation is facilitated by feeling as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible. And this (affective) felicity/ innocuity is potently enabled via minimisation of both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings. An affective awareness is the key to maximising felicity and innocuity over all those alternate feelings inasmuch the slightest diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation automatically activates attentiveness.

Attentiveness to the cause of diminished enjoyment and appreciation restores felicity and innocuity. The habituation of actualistic awareness and attentiveness requires a persistent initialisation; persistent initialisation segues into a wordless approach, a non-verbal attitude towards life. It delivers the goods just here, right now, and not off into some indeterminate future. Plus the successes are repeatable – virtually on demand – and thus satisfy the ‘scientific method’.

So, ‘I’ asked myself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?

As one knows from the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s), which are moments of perfection everybody has at some stage in their life, that it is possible to experience this moment in time and this place in space as perfection personified, ‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most (‘feeling good’ is an unambiguous term – it is a general sense of well-being – and if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means ... then do not even bother trying to do this at all).

Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good ... but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand ... with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. And, of course, once one does get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ ... and after that to ‘feeling perfect’.

The more one enjoys and appreciates being just here right now – to the point of excellence being the norm – the greater the likelihood of a PCE happening ... a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing the magical event, which indubitably shows where everyone has being going awry, to occur. Plus any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway.

The wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity/ innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way.

One is thus soon back on track ... and all because of everyday events. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

RESPONDENT: If you care to respond, I thank you.

RICHARD: You are very welcome ... I cannot guarantee to respond to everything.

RESPONDENT: If not, I understand that this topic may be too inane to initiate a response.

RICHARD: No way is it too inane ... it is right on the nose.