Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

Richard’s Correspondence

On The Actual Freedom Mailing List

with Correspondent No. 84


April 22 2005

RESPONDENT: Where is Richard?

RICHARD: I have been otherwise occupied, this past month or two, moving house – selling-off furniture, white-goods, desk-top computers, and the like – and settling into my new residence ... a ready-made retreat somewhat removed from mainstream utilities in that it has no internet connection (no telephone cable), electric power comes primarily via photovoltaic cells, bottled liquid petroleum gas fuels the stove, and so forth.

RESPONDENT: He hasn’t died again has he?

RICHARD: Ha ... I have been here all along (it was the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body who died all those years ago).

RESPONDENT: Does he intend to participate here again?

RICHARD: Aye, although probably less often than before, and certainly less immediately as, until wireless access comes of age in this country, my only way onto the world wide web is through internet cafés, whenever I come into the nearest town to purchase supplies, or via the connection of select associates should the occasion arise to socialise.

I do have a mobile phone but, as uploads/downloads using it as a modem take a month of Sundays to complete, and as by being charged for by the minute it costs an arm and a leg into the bargain, I cannot see that sending off an e-mail anytime of the day or night, as has been my wont, is likely to be happening soon.

Apart from all that ... I do notice, having just this previous night read through all the 400+ e-mails since I last wrote, that the mailing list is doing just fine without me.

And this pleases me greatly.

April 27 2005

RESPONDENT: When Richard advises people to ‘minimise’ the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activate the felicitous feelings what does he really mean by ‘minimise’?

RICHARD: He means lessen their grip and reduce both the prevalence and duration of them, through nipping them in the bud (via sincere application of the actualism method), before they can get up and running ... thus maximising the amount of time the felicitous/ innocuous feelings can remain operating.

RESPONDENT: Feelings can be ‘minimised’ by brute force, e.g. repression, denial, avoidance and distraction but what is the sensible way to do it?

RICHARD: By getting into the habit – humans are very adept at habituation – of feeling felicitous/ innocuous come-what-may ... nothing, but nothing, is worth losing felicity/ innocuity in order to get malicious and/or sorrowful about.

It is all very, very simple.

*

RESPONDENT: I have tried to eliminate fear.

RICHARD: If I may ask? What does that have to do about the topic under discussion (which is the subject you chose)?

RESPONDENT: I have repeatedly felt the fear, investigated its causes, identified the associated aspects of my social identity and instincts, understood the silliness of spoiling this one and only moment of being alive in such a way ...

RICHARD: If I may interject? Have you actually understood the silliness ... or intellectually comprehended it and moved-on to that grass which, although well-trodden, looks oh-so-greener (albeit simply because it on the other side of the fence where multitudes are avidly grazing)?

RESPONDENT: ... and so on. Unfortunately I cannot see any changes occurring. The whole process happens on a level that is too superficial.

RICHARD: Are you really saying that feeling felicitous/ innocuous for 99% of the time (an arbitrary figure) in your day-to-day life – an amount of felicity/ innocuity which is way beyond normal human expectations – is happening on a level which is too superficial?

RESPONDENT: It does not penetrate deeply enough to pull up the roots of fear.

RICHARD: Again ... what does that have to do about the topic under discussion (the subject you chose)?

*

RESPONDENT: The result is that fear still comes, stays as long as it pleases, then departs until next time. Then it comes, stays as long as it pleases, then departs until next time. So on. So forth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end, hallelujah.

RICHARD: If I might suggest? Try looking-up the word ‘sincere’ in a good dictionary or two ... and I only suggest this as sincerity is the key to unlocking naiveté (without which one might as well stand on one’s head in a corner and whistle pop-goes-the-weasel for all the good dabbling with the actualism method will do).

*

RESPONDENT: I cannot see how it will ever be different because ‘I’ cannot touch the source of it.

RICHARD: The reason why you cannot touch the source of fear is because that is what ‘you’ are ... ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: How can ‘I’, a phantasmic figment of these passions, reach down and dig them up by the roots?

RICHARD: As the passions are as phantasmic as ‘I’ am – they have no existence in actuality either – it would appear that there has been some considerable intellectual distancing, by ‘me’, from ‘my’ very roots.

RESPONDENT: ‘I’ have no grip because I am nothing.

RICHARD: True ...yet as what ‘I’ am trying to grip is, contemporaneously, also nothing then ‘me’ and ‘my’ roots are a perfect match for each other (as well they should as they are one and the same thing).

RESPONDENT: I am a mere ghost grasping at reflections of something that happened before ‘I’ even appeared and started reacting to it.

RICHARD: As it is a bit of a stretch to propose that the instinctual passions swirled around in utero without ever forming themselves into an embryonic feeling being, an instinctually passionate inchoate presence, a rudimentary survival ‘self’ as it were, then it is fair to say that ‘I’ appeared simultaneous to ‘my’ roots’ manifestation.

RESPONDENT: How can such a thing act upon itself?

RICHARD: In the main ... affectively (although, of course, that would require a cessation of the intellectual distancing); in the minor ... cognitively (even though the feeling self is primal the thinking self is derivative and thus both are, fundamentally, affective in substance).

RESPONDENT: Can it?

RICHARD: Indeed it can ... for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: Does it?

RICHARD: Indeed it does ... for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: Who can vouch for this method with 100% sincerity?

RICHARD: This particular flesh and blood body typing these words can, of course, as this very discussion would not be taking place had the method not been 100% effective (which is not to forget to mention that the mailing list and the web site owe their very existence to its efficacy).

Meanwhile, back at the topic you chose, the method (which has not only already enabled one human being to be actually free from the human condition but has also enabled others to be virtually free of same) is just sitting there ... quite ready to be utilised by anyone who is prepared to give the minimisation effect of it a goodly chance to work its magical-like way of maximising felicity/ innocuity.

And here is a clue to make things go tickety-tick: naiveté, being guaranteed to reawaken a child-like sensuosity, means one walks about in a state of wide-eyed wonder, simply marvelling at being just here right now.

And all the while leaving intellectualisation to the avidly-grazing intellectuals.

May 06 2005

RESPONDENT: When Richard advises people to ‘minimise’ the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activate the felicitous feelings what does he really mean by ‘minimise’?

RICHARD: He means lessen their grip and reduce both the prevalence and duration of them, through nipping them in the bud (via sincere application of the actualism method), before they can get up and running ... thus maximising the amount of time the felicitous/ innocuous feelings can remain operating.

RESPONDENT: Feelings can be ‘minimised’ by brute force, e.g. repression, denial, avoidance and distraction but what is the sensible way to do it?

RICHARD: By getting into the habit – humans are very adept at habituation – of feeling felicitous/ innocuous come-what-may ... nothing, but nothing, is worth losing felicity/ innocuity in order to get malicious and/or sorrowful about.

It is all very, very simple.

RESPONDENT: Okay, I see I have been going about it the wrong way. Instead of declining to be sucked into the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings I have been going into them willingly in order to explore them in depth, thinking that if I explore them thoroughly enough they might tire themselves out and stop coming back! It hasn’t worked that way. I’ll try it your way now. Thanks.

RICHARD: You are very welcome ... and I particularly took note of something you wrote elsewhere. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘... it’s surprisingly easy not to be pulled into the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings once the intention is clear. I have overlooked the simplicity of the method partly because *I associate being happy and peaceful with being a simpleton or fool*. If the process is seen as an heroic exploration of psyche culminating in dissolution and ‘death’ it panders to one’s ego (in the popular sense of the word) a lot more than being merely ‘happy and harmless’. [emphasis added]. (Re: Minimise, Fri 29/04/2005 5:22 PM AEST)

That which I have highlighted is the crux of the matter ... it being why naiveté rarely, if ever, gets a look-in. The following may be of interest in this regard:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Whatever presents itself in terms of divisive thought and feeling can dissolve in awareness.
• [Richard]: ‘Nothing substantive can happen in awareness while the instinctual survival passions dominate ... and the word ‘survival’ should explain why.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘It comes through earnest self-study.
• [Richard]: ‘If the above quoted understanding [‘the self is nothing other than conditioning, the thinker/feeler/doer is thought’] is what comes through ‘earnest self-study’ then perhaps something else is called for.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘You mean simplistic advice like keep asking ‘what am I experiencing?’ ;-)
• [Richard]: ‘Ahh ... I always like it when someone says something like this as it shows that they are beginning to take notice that when I say naiveté I mean naiveté.
Maybe its very simplicity is why it has been overlooked all these aeons?

In a nutshell: to the cultured sophisticate to be simple is to be simplistic.

July 07 2005

RESPONDENT: Regarding the statement: – ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings, ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. My everyday experience of being a ‘self’ does not entirely match up with this statement. I do not usually identify myself with my feelings or experience myself as inseparable from them. I regard myself as having feelings, being subject to them, rather than being identical with them.

RICHARD: Aye ... that is the common, or unexamined, experience of most peoples I have spoken to/read of/heard about. Generally I will then ask them about the deeper feelings, not just the emotions, but the passions themselves ... specifically ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself).

Also I will enquire as to whether they would say that human beings are, essentially, feeling beings ... with nary an exception, as far as I can recall, each person has agreed (and quite often with an ‘of course’).

*

RESPONDENT: I experience my innermost self as a purposeful agent whose essential core is will/volition. Feelings seem to be secondary to this will. They arise like frictional heat energy from the interaction between ‘me’ (will/purpose) and the actual circumstances of life.

RICHARD: Interestingly enough I posted several quotes pertaining to that very subject less than two weeks ago (in the latter half of the e-mail):

*

RESPONDENT: Richard, I would appreciate it if you would explicate the relationship between self and will/volition as experienced before, during and after enlightenment.

RICHARD: Before ... will/volition (experienced as being ego) was self; during ... will/volition (having being surrendered under the illusion of ego-death) was absolute; after ... will/volition (with both ego and soul/spirit extinct) is nothing more complicated than intent/determination.

RESPONDENT: When you were normal, did you experience yourself as having feelings ...

RICHARD: As a normal person (whilst a child, a youth, a young adult) ... yes.

RESPONDENT: ... only later to discover that you were them ...

RICHARD: For an enlightened/awakened being feelings are not feelings but a state of being.

RESPONDENT: ... or was it clear to you all your life that you were the feelings?

RICHARD: It only became (progressively) clear that ‘I’ was ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings were ‘me’ – and that the exalted/venerated states of being were affective in nature – during the eleven years 1981-1992.

And I say ‘progressively’ as denial was a powerful factor to be reckoned with.

August 14 2005

RESPONDENT: Richard, in the world of ‘Being’ what is it that populates the ‘landscape’ such that it becomes more featureless (like a physical landscape in a blizzard) the further you go toward its outer limits?

RICHARD: A striking absence of not only the presence of other enlightened beings/awakened ones but of any direction-markers denoting such having been there already (hence the ‘white-out’ analogy).

August 27 2005

RESPONDENT: Richard, in the world of ‘Being’ what is it that populates the ‘landscape’ such that it becomes more featureless (like a physical landscape in a blizzard) the further you go toward its outer limits?

RICHARD: A striking absence of not only the presence of other enlightened beings/awakened ones but of any direction-markers denoting such having been there already (hence the ‘white-out’ analogy).

RESPONDENT: Okay, thanks. I didn’t know the psychic maze was populated and sign-posted by other ‘Beings’ – although I might have remembered something like it from my early youth.

RICHARD: You might be indeed remembering something from your early youth as the term [quote] ‘psychic maze’ [endquote] does not appear anywhere in that passage of mine which your initial query, regarding the world of ‘Being’, is obviously drawn from.

The world of ‘Being’ itself has, of course, no spatio-temporal corporeality – it being a timeless and spaceless and formless realm – and the physical analogy is only to emphasise that the presence of other enlightened beings/ awakened ones deepening their enlightenment/ awakenment progressively lessens, and thus gradually weakens, the deeper the penetration is ... until even the lingering remnants of their (collective) energy-field finally peters out altogether.

RESPONDENT: Those 11 years must have been a fascinating voyage.

RICHARD: Maybe that is why reading/watching science-fiction holds little, if any, interest for me – even the occasional quest-type adventure-fantasy, no matter how extravagant the special-effects may be, soon palls as it almost inevitably/ invariably devolves into being a good-triumphing-over-evil morality/ ethicality play – as the paucity of imagination limits all such genre within its own self-confining/self-perpetuating parameters.

*

RESPONDENT: On a more practical and personal note, throughout this winter I’ve been applying your method with encouraging results. Mainly :-

1) I’m no longer blindly bouncing back and forth between the ‘bad’ feelings and their ‘good’ pacifiers. At first I found it hard to sit with the ‘bad’ feelings without immediately running into the waiting, welcoming arms of the ‘good’, but now I can understand how vitally important this is if one wants to cure the underlying condition instead of just treating the symptoms. I look for the ‘third alternative’ all the time now.

RICHARD: Excellent ... although it is quite simple in hindsight to understand, that for the ‘bad’ feelings to cease their polar opposites the ‘good’ feelings must similarly come to an end, it can be rather difficult to initially comprehend that it is indeed as simple as that.

RESPONDENT: 2) I’ve given up blaming other people for my feelings, no matter what the situation. Looking back it seems such a simple and obvious thing to do but it had escaped me. On the flipside I decline to make myself responsible for other people’s emotional hurts (unless I’m hurting them intentionally).

RICHARD: Yes ... the reproachful ‘you have hurt my feelings’ works both ways. For instance:

• [Richard]: ‘... many years ago the identity inhabiting this body was conversing with ‘his’ then mother-in-law, painstakingly explaining why’ he’ was no longer able to do something – something which eludes memory nowadays – and was both surprised and pleased to hear the following words ‘he’ spoke in response to her reproachful ‘oh, you have hurt my feelings’ (manipulative) reply to ‘his’ carefully explicated account:
• ‘Then why carry [harbour/nurse] such feelings ... surely you leave yourself open to all manner of hurt by doing so?’
Needless is it to add that ‘he’ was to ask himself that very question on many an occasion from that day forwards?’

RESPONDENT: 3) I’ve become very conscious of how people are enslaved by the need to belong, and how it is impossible to be unconditionally happy and harmless while we harbour this need. Consequently, I’ve begun to withdraw my psychic/social/emotional tentacles, replacing emotional demands/dependencies with a friendly, commonsense, ‘live and let live’ attitude most of the time. There is a long way to go along this path, and there are some daunting prospects ahead, but I am emboldened by the results of the first steps.

RICHARD: Further to the ‘live and let live’ attitude ... the following may be of assistance:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘... because there is no ‘I’ in you, there is nobody to worry about anything or correct, improve anything?
• [Richard]: ‘There is no worry, no, but I am not too sure that this is because there is no ‘I’ ... it is simply silly to worry as worrying does nothing whatsoever to get an event changed.
I correct – and thus improve – what can be corrected ... according to a preference for creature comforts and ease of life-style. For example: if I can sit upon a cushion instead of the brick pavers of the patio I will ... that is a preference. But if a cushion is not available it does not matter ... I thoroughly enjoy being alive at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space irregardless of what is happening. I could be just as happy and harmless on bread and water in solitary confinement in some insalubrious penitentiary ... but I would be pretty silly to act or behave in such a way as to occasion that outcome!
The ‘I’ that used to inhabit this body did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. That is, ‘I’ would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but if it did not turn out like that ... it did not really matter for it was only a preference. ‘I’ chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make ‘me’ angry ... or irritated ... or even peeved, if that was possible.
It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. ‘My’ life became cleaner and clearer and more and more pure as each habitual way of living life was consciously eliminated through constant exposure. Finally ‘I’ invited the actual by letting go of the controls and letting this moment live ‘me’. ‘I’ became the experience of the doing of this business of being alive ... no longer the ‘do-er’. Thus ‘my’ days were numbered ... ‘I’ could hardly maintain ‘myself’ ... soon ‘my’ time would come to an end. An inevitability set in and a thrilling momentum took over ... ‘my’ demise became imminent’.

RESPONDENT: 4) I’m learning how to be friends with myself. The very idea once struck me as corny and wishy-washy on a superficial level, and on a deeper level quite impossible because of my intimate familiarity with all the filth and scum in ‘me’. But after overcoming those initial reactions I’ve found out just how much and how often I persecute myself, and how self-defeating it is. There is only ‘me’ in here, and whatever is done to ‘me’ is ‘me’ doing it to myself.

RICHARD: Indeed so. There is, however, an aspect of ‘me’ which is virtually unaffected by both ‘my’ vile and virtuous aspects ... and sincerity is the key to accessing it:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘If I could move on to the question of being ‘Happy and Harmless’; I guess that the main difficulty I am having is in understanding that one can be happy without ‘feeling’ happy but I will persevere with the actual freedom web site, which I am finding fascinating, until this becomes clear to me.
• [Richard]: ‘Okay ... it may be worthwhile bearing in mind that it is impossible to be happy (be happy as in being carefree), as distinct from feeling happy, without being harmless (being harmless as in being innocuous), as distinct from feeling harmless, and to be happy *and* harmless is to be unable to induce suffering – etymologically the word ‘harmless’ (harm + less) comes from the Old Norse ‘harmr’ (meaning grief, sorrow) – either in oneself or another.
Thus the means of comprehending the distinction lies in understanding the nature of innocence – something entirely new to human experience – and the nearest one can come to being innocent whilst being an identity is to be naïve (not to be confused with being gullible).
And the key to naïveté (usually locked away in childhood) is sincerity’.

RESPONDENT: I’m sure there will be plenty more to come.

RICHARD: That is for sure ... simply being alive is an adventure in itself.


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