Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

December 15 2002

RESPONDENT: As a new member of the list I find the idea of Actual Freedom resonates with me a lot. Asking the question how I am experiencing this moment of being alive makes a lot of sense to me, and in itself doesn’t sound too difficult.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List ... and, no, it is not at all difficult to ask oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive as it soon becomes a non-verbal attitude towards life ... a wordless approach each moment again.

This moment is the only moment one is ever alive.

RESPONDENT: But the bit I have difficulty with is the subsequent investigation when I find I am not being happy and harmless. I haven’t found much guidance on the website about how to do this. That’s the sort of thing psychotherapists are supposed to be necessary for, isn’t it?

RICHARD: As I have never spoken to or heard about personally, seen or listened to on any media (such as television documentaries, videos, films, tapes and records), or have ever read about in any literature (such as in books, journals, theses, treatises, articles, magazines, newspapers, tracts, pamphlets or brochures and, latterly, on the internet), any psychotherapist who is happy and harmless twenty four hours of the day seven days of the week three hundred and sixty five days of the year then whatever it is that they are ‘supposed to be necessary for’ it is most certainly not felicitous/ innocuous living.

But to get to the point: any subsequent investigation necessary will happen of its own accord, each moment again, if that is what is required to get back to feeling happy and harmless as an ongoing experiencing.

This is because the main point of asking oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive is to be happy and harmless just here right now ... and if one is not being happy and harmless then one has something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time one felt happy and harmless, and now? For example: when did I feel happy and harmless last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and ...’. 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.

And thus one is back to being happy and harmless again ... and it is much easier to suss out how one habitually strays off the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom when one is not glum and grumpy.

RESPONDENT: To go back to the root cause of feeling unhappy and harmful doesn’t for me seem to be an easy process at all. So are there further questions I can ask myself during the investigation? or how does one go about it?

RICHARD: As actualism is all about enjoying and appreciating being here, each moment again as this flesh and blood body, then the normal events in one’s everyday life will soon enough bring up whatever ‘further questions’ need to be asked as they happen.

In a nutshell: anything other than feeling felicitous/ innocuous is a flashing red light, as it were, signalling that something is amiss.