Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘D’ Correspondence

January 5 2014

Re: Log

RESPONDENT: This is quite a shot in the arm. I realised with this exchange more clearly than ever before the difference between enjoying the moment and conditional pleasure seeking. I was riding my bike today thinking about how someone had said something to make me sad, because it reminded me of [whatever]. I tried to cheer myself up by thinking contrary thoughts. Then I yanked my head away and looked at the trees waving about in the warm summer air. They seemed gay to a point of being ridiculous. The whole world looked ridiculously gay and merry in a baffling way. The world seemed to be turning in on itself. It was stupendous! (Jan 4, 12:35 AM; #161xx)

RICHARD: G’day No. 45,

Before commenting on your above [quote] ‘enjoying the moment’ [endquote] post, I will first draw your attention to two specific portions of your 5th email to this forum (16 days after you subscribed).

Vis.:

#151xx
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:34:44 -0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Disassociation?

• [Respondent]: [...]. In my life I experience dissociation as a ‘fog’ or sleepiness in my head when I try to resist something that is happening in the moment eg: forced to sit and listen to a boring / disagreeable person at a party for instance. [...].
I can see that in the effort to become happy and harmless in the moment the subtle and unconscious tendency to shove my problems out of sight until I’ve managed to repress a lot of stuff. [...].

Upon a closer inspection it will be seen how you have twice used the expression [quote] ‘in the moment’ [endquote].

There is another instance in your 11th email, coupled with the words [quote] ‘enjoy the moment’ [endquote], just as in your further above [quote] ‘enjoying the moment’ [endquote] current post.

Vis.:

#151xx
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 07:38:46 -0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Dealing with negative emotions.

• [Respondent]: [...]. Here is my understanding of the actualist method, please correct me if I’m wrong: Make a sincere attempt to enjoy the moment by cultivating an interest in the sensuousness of the world around you at all times. Take time to ‘smell the flowers’ in the most profound way possible. Find the perfection in the moment and realise the inherent perfection in the world. Delight and revel in it. [...].

Given you say [quote] ‘please correct me if I’m wrong’ [endquote] then I shall proceed to do just that because the expression [quote] ‘in the moment’ [endquote] also features in your later emails, as well as your earlier ones, such as the following post last month.

Vis.:

#16027
Date: 10 Dec 2013 01:53:23 –0800
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: 2 week AF challenge

• [Respondent]: [...]. I am beginning to gradually peel back the layers of the self that get in the way of my enjoyment. I was discussing this with my analyst today. We explored specifically what was getting in the way of my ability to enjoy and be in the moment. [...].

In that instance both ‘enjoy the moment’ and ‘be in the moment’ are combined, as in [quote] ‘to enjoy and be in the moment’ [endquote], thus demonstrating their congruence for you.

Indeed, in your 4th email to this forum you not only spoke of [quote] ‘present moment enjoyment’ [endquote] but referred to your sister’s children and small-town people in India throwing themselves [quote] ‘into the flow’ [endquote] of real-world time.

(It is only real-world time which moves – aka ‘flows’ from the past, into the present, and off to the future – as is demonstrated in a PCE whereby it is experientially evidenced that time does not move in actuality).

Vis.:

#151xx
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:19:24 -0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: Being an everyday bloke first...

• [Respondent]: [...]. I’ve also noticed I need to organise my life around sensuous noticing. I do this by minimising the time I spend watching TV, worrying about my thoughts or mindlessly surfing the Internet.
Trying to get away from the habits that take away from present moment enjoyment. I just got back from home – India – and spent time with my sisters kids. Kids in particular but also with small- town people in India you see a lot of non-neurotic folk just doing life without agonising about it too much. Not that they are all deliriously happy of course, far from it but the throwing of them- selves into the flow without over intellectualising everything was beautiful. [...].

Please note I am *not* suggesting moment-to-moment real-world enjoyment (and appreciation) is to be abjured but, rather, drawing attention to the conflation of that real-world enjoyment (and appreciation) with being ‘in the moment’ and/or ‘in the flow’ (and/or ‘in the present’ and/or ‘in the now’ and so on and so forth).

Having established this critical point: a fortnight or so before your further above 10th of December email (#160xx) was posted the expression [quote] ‘in the moment’ [endquote] again appears.

Vis.:

#159xx
Date: 23 Nov 2013 23:42:58 –0800
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: ‘[Respondent’s]’ Actual Freedom Practise Log

• [Respondent]: [...]. The cool thing about going through something horrible is that the gradient between the bad and the felicitous is much steeper – it does afford one some ‘high-contrast’ perspectives and make the lessons of feeling good, being in the moment etc. all the more poignant. [...].

As well as 3 days prior to that instance.

Vis.:

#158xx
Date: 20 Nov 2013 00:18:10 –0800
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: ‘[Respondent’s]’ Actual Freedom Practise Log

• [Respondent]: [...]. In some ways it is kind of useful seeing how this weight can be suddenly dropped from time to time, just by side-stepping the whole paradigm I’m embedded in.
Useful as an analogy for ridding myself of ‘me’ that is.
It only happens for moments at a time or perhaps for a few hours. I can’t make it happen. Sometimes it happens only in my dreams. But when it does it feels like I am living in the moment. [...].

And, again, 10 days before that.

Vis.:

#157xx
Date: 10 Nov 2013 04:00:28 –0800
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: ‘Respondent’s]’ Actual Freedom Practise Log

• [Respondent]: [...]. yeah there definitely is an element of trying to possess and own actualism as an identity and its hard to say how much of that is involved here, a fair bit I suspect. I remember encountering this in meditation.
How early progress of being in the moment would be derailed by lust for spiritual accomplishment and being too preoccupied by results. [...].

Plus 2 weeks prior to that one.

Vis.:

#156xx
Date: 27 Oct 2013 16:17:26 –0700
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: Knack at seeing silliness

• [Respondent]: [...]. I suspect that building the muscles to sweep this stuff away and just be in the moment is an integral part of actualism practise though. [...].

A month earlier as well.

Vis.:

#154xx
Date: 29 Sep 2013 03:01:01 –0700
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: Time, Space and Pure Intent

• [Respondent]: [...]. Someone to try and explain to me how time could could be infinite (some would say infinite time would incorporate all events past, present and future in it) yet static, yet only real in ‘the moment’ and still contain the movement of things within it.

As well as 2 weeks before that.

Vis.:

#154xx
Date: 14 Sep 2013 22:41:44 –0700
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: ‘[Respondent’s]’ Actual Freedom Practise Log

• [Respondent]: Much unhappiness I cause myself comes from resistance. Either ....
- A resistance to unpleasant tasks that need to be done
- Resistance to certain emotions that I am feeling
- Resistance to being happy in the moment (usually because
I’ve emotional open loops needing closure) [...].

And the day before also.

Vis.:

#154xx
Date: 13 Sep 2013 21:49:49 –0700
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: ‘[Respondent’s]’ Actual Freedom Practise Log

• [Respondent]: [...]. Its only when I’m done talking and doing stuff that I realise I’ve been tense and wired and deliberately make attempts to relax and get back in the moment. I suppose the habit needs to be more ingrained and reflexive. [...].

A fortnight before that one brings this account of those instances back to August (the month you subscribed to this forum).

Vis.:

#152xx
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 09:18:38 –0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: A bunch of questions re: AF

• [Respondent]: HAIETMOBA – what is the best way to use this?
• [Claudiu]: It’s an easy way to get me back to being aware of how ‘I’ am currently feeling.
• [Respondent]: What I’m hearing here is that this is a tool in AF. No more and no less. But it seems to be not a screw-driver so much as a swiss-army knife. Its a tool to spur attention and direct it to feeling. The ‘how’ and the ‘alive’ bits also seem to make attentiveness more about our lived experience and send us colliding into the moment rather than having it devolve into a dry insight type exercise. Right?

As well as 2 days prior to that occasion.

Vis.:

#152xx
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 22:01:20 –0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Still not very much to hold onto.

• [Respondent]: At the moment I’m still chugging on with my AF practise based on faith and appeal. I have no PCE’s except in the distant past (excluding my psychedelic PCE’s which to me seem unreal and relatively inaccessible now)
Maybe the problem is that the happiness in the moment when it is good is good. But the problems and vast ice- bergs of fear, dread, shame, guilt etc. seem to dwarf it at present. [...].

Plus there were 2 instances in the email 4 days before that one.

Vis.:

#152xx
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 07:14:14 –0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: Three types of mindfulness

• [Respondent]: [...]. Yes, tacking on an effortful focus on sensation when one is not feeling good is not the actualist method.
First feel happy and harmless in the moment. One cannot but be an identity = ‘I’ = feeling – as long as the identity is present so any attempt to suppress feeling would be ridiculous. [...].
There are frequent moments of happiness and neutrality in the middle (although these moments I predict would be more frequent were I not in the soup I am in now) I can use the actual freedom method of being affectively as happy as possible in the moment to increase the number of these happy moments. [...].

The reason why I am drawing these instances of the expression [quote] ‘in the moment’ [endquote] to your attention is because I make it quite clear, on my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust website, that it is not applicable to actualism.

(An online search using the search-term <‘in the moment’ site:actualfreedom.com.au> (sans the < and > symbols of course) will readily return all instances; similarly ‘in the present’ and ‘in the now’, and so on and so forth, can be substituted for that ‘in the moment’ search-term).

For example (from 2002):

• [Richard]: (...). I have oft-times said that if one allows this moment to live one (rather than trying to live in the moment) one’s journey will be over sooner rather than later. (Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 32, 27 April 2002).

The following instance (written in 2000) is more explicit as to why trying to live [quote] ‘in the present’ [endquote] is not applicable to actualism.

Vis.:

• [Richard]: (...) the essential character of the perfection of the infinitude of this universe which born me, is living me and will die me in due course, is enabled by ‘my’ concurrence. ‘I’ give ‘myself’ permission to allow this moment to live me (rather than ‘me’ trying to live in the present) ... and let go the controls. (List B, No. 25f, 22 June 2000).

The parenthesised [quote] ‘rather than ‘me’ trying to live in the present’ [endquote] will be self-explanatory, non?

In the following example, a co-respondent endeavoured to make out that my report of something radical – so radical as to be entirely new to human knowledge/human history – was not exclusive to actualism (from the year 2004).

Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: (...) being in the moment with one’s senses/ emotions/ thought – which is a part of actualism but not exclusive to actualism (...).
• [Richard]: First of all, ‘being in the moment’ with one’s senses/ emotions/ thoughts is not part of actualism ... thus any question about exclusivity is without substance. (...). (Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 68, 13 July 2004a).

It was obviously an insufficiently-researched anagraph – a trait all such criticasters display – because as early as 1997 (the year I first went public, online, with my discovery) I was making it quite clear I was not talking about [quote] ‘living in the moment’ [endquote].

Vis.:

• [Respondent No. 12]: (...). Your words about ‘living in the moment’ don’t do much for me, as every mindless person I meet is actively promoting the lifestyle of ‘living in the moment’. It is the fashion of the age.
• [Richard]: (...). I typed the words ‘living in the moment’ into the search function of this computer and sent it back through my posts and it could not find the phrase anywhere. Perhaps you could send me your copy where it does say that? (List A, No. 12, No.01).

Needless is it to add that Respondent No. 12 never did produce any such reference (there being no such thing, of course, for him to produce)?

Regardless, his running-mate tried the same line on me many weeks later.

Vis.:

• [Richard]: I have no ego or soul; no self or Self; no God or Truth ... simply the moment-to-moment apperception of myself as being this physical universe’s experience of itself as a sensate, reflective human being.
• [Co-Respondent]: This is commonly called ‘living in the moment’. Women and children are particularly good at this, while cows and dogs are even better.
• [Richard]: I beg to differ. This is not called ‘living in the moment’. No. 12 tried that accusation on me weeks and weeks ago. (List A, No. 4, No.08).

I have, of course, made it equally clear that the variant expression [quote] ‘live in the present’ [endquote] similarly does not apply.

Vis.:

• [Richard]: My experience showed that by allowing the PCE to happen (on a daily basis, sometimes two-three times a day) a momentum built up of its own accord which could not be stopped ... an inevitability came into action.
What ‘I’ did was to give ‘myself’ permission to let go of the controls and allow the moment to live me (rather than ‘me’ trying to live in the present). In short: if one ceases objecting to being here – without swinging to an opposite such as gratitude – then the rest is history.
This is because this moment is where it is all at. This moment is where it is all happening – all of the universe is happening all-at-once – and it is all happening all-at-once just here and it is all happening all-at-once right now.
And it is all already always happening anyway ... irregardless of ‘me’ and ‘my’ objections. (List B, No.39a, 6 June 2001).

The following example (from 2001) goes into more detail as to why [quote] ‘living in the present’ [endquote] does not apply to actualism/ actual freedom.

Vis.:

• [Richard]: Where one lets the moment live one – rather than what is called ‘living in the present’ – it will be seen with startling clarity that this moment is eternal ... and not ‘timeless’. Anyone who succeeds in ‘living in the present’, which is experienced as being that fleeting moment sandwiched between the past and the future, is present as a self (albeit an impersonal self) in/as an oceanic feeling of oneness ... which gives the impression of being ‘timeless’.
This moment is not ‘timeless’ ... for, although the fact is that it has no duration, as ‘then’ and ‘now’ and ‘then’ (was here then, is here now, will be here then), it does not negate the fact that this moment is already always here now (eternally here).
It is never not this moment ... ‘tis not fleeting at all. (List B, No. 19f, 30 January 2001g).

I also point out (in 2003 for instance) how I have experiential knowledge of being/living in the now, in the present, in the moment – night and day for eleven years in fact – and found it wanting.

Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: Do I need any method to be in the now, the present, the moment? This is a child’s play! If you want to be in the present, your mind has to be totally silent, completely quite? Why can’t you get this? (replies to these questions are optional here because they will be considered futile anyways).
• [Richard]: As I have no interest whatsoever of being ‘in the present’ again (having done just that, night and day, for eleven years and found it wanting) I shall not be replying to those questions anyway (...). (Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 51a, 10 October, 2003).

And that 2003 response of mine renders this an apt place to draw the following to your attention.

Vis.:

#152xx
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 09:51:44 –0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Re: A bunch of questions re: AF

• [Respondent]: [...]. I still don’t get ‘the moment’ thing. As in I can get that whole thing of ‘the moment is all we have, the past is history and the future is fantasy’ thing that I’ve heard spoken of forever in advaita with its most recent iteration in Tolle’s Power of Now.
Is this the same thing in AF?
What’s so special about the moment that I should surrender to it or savour it? Is it because its the only true way of being happy ( as Tolle implies )?

First of all, there is a ‘Selected Correspondence’ page – all the selected correspondence was personally chosen for their real-world relevance by feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ over a decade or so – where I have answered queries about Mr. Eckhart Tolle (aka Mr. Ulrich Tolle for 30+ years).

Vis.:

www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-eckharttolle.htm

(There really is no substitute for taking notice of what is freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust website).

Second, as Mr. Eckhart Tolle is an unapologetic spiritualist it simply does not make sense to even think for a moment – let alone type it out and click ‘send’ – that anything he has to say would be applicable to something entirely new to human history/human knowledge.

Yet a month later you do so again (and not only expanding on that spiritualistic theme from Ms. Oprah Winfrey’s protégé, plus providing a video link to his syrupy recitation of Chapter 4 in his 2003 best-seller as well, but chose to drag in that mathematically-modelled relativistic (i.e., subjectivistic) ignis fatuus so beloved of theoretical physicists as well).

Vis.:

#154xx
Date: 27 Sep 2013 15:00:22 –0700
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: RE: Re: Time, Space and Pure Intent

• [Respondent]: [...]. Ok so the moment is beginning-less and endless or is that just time? Or is time = the moment?
Also are time and space interlinked in AF cosmology?
Is it time-space as per the theory of relativity?
Where I’m at currently is visualising things moving in 3 dimensional space-time where the forward movement of time (as well space) is an illusion created by the movement of objects. All is a vast stillness that never changes. Any- thing that happens in the stillness cause time and space to come into being, partly because of physical laws and partly because of our own human need for apprehending the movement of objects. I seem to be experiencing time as a gigantic void now.
So if the movement of time is an illusion, then does time have any properties at all? One could just call it the great nothing and leave it at that. But clearly to me at least notionally even the idea of an unmoving, eternal time has properties. Namely that stuff seems to happen within it rather than the other way around. And that it is ever present and never past or future.
If all this is true then I can see why Richard invites us to enjoy and appreciate the moment. Because past and future are fictions. Those two vectors don’t exist in actual time.
Actual time is not a vector. It is a point. It is an eternal void.
Real time/ human times are conventions only. The product of human memory and society. The way in which we process ‘nowness’. Even this has changed over time and is acculturated. There are primitive tribes that have very few words to describe the past and future. In Asia and parts of the West time was circular or a spiral. In the modern West time is linear. A vast straight line that recedes infinitely on either end. All these are useful fictions.
Is it something like what Tolle says? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkgNIJLpBEI [...].

As already mentioned, the video link you provided is an oral rendition selected from Chapter 4: The Now (pages 37-47) of the book ‘Stillness Speaks’ ©2003Eckhart Tolle; Namaste Publishing, Vancouver, Canada. (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=qcfueLfqxR8C).

In that chapter there are more than a few instances of him using the expression [quote] ‘in the Now’ [endquote].

Vis.:

• ‘When you don’t feel at home in the Now ...’. [p. 40].
• ‘To have your attention in the Now ...’. [p. 41].
• ‘That anchors you in the Now’. [p. 42].
• ‘When your attention moves into the Now ...’. [p. 44].
• ‘The moment you enter the Now ...’. [p. 44].
• ‘The more you live in the Now ...’. [p. 44].
• ‘When you step into the Now ...’. [p. 45].

Also needless is it to add I have already answered queries about [quote] ‘in the Now’ [endquote] in regards to actualism/ actual freedom?

Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: Awareness is in the Now.
• [Richard]: Everything is happening only at this moment in eternal time ... there is nowhere or nowhen else than just here right now.
• [Co-Respondent]: Try thinking you are in the Now. You can not do it.
• [Richard]: But I am not ‘in the Now’ ... this flesh and blood body is already always just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time. (List C, No. 7, 3 July 2000).

And again (also in the year 2000).

Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: Richard, according to his own articulated dialogue, has not, in this lifetime, ever been in the Now.
• [Richard]: Except that I repeatedly say that the ‘Me’ that was did live ‘in the Now’ for eleven years ... thus I have intimate knowledge of what you speak of. The exchange you are referring to went like this:

• [Respondent]: ‘Awareness is in the Now’.
• [Richard]: ‘Everything is happening only at this moment in eternal time ... there is nowhere or nowhen else than just here right now’.
• [Respondent]: ‘Try thinking you are in the Now. You can not do it’.
• [Richard]: ‘But I am not ‘in the Now’ ... this flesh and blood body is already always just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time’. [endquote].

This is because there are three I’s altogether ... but only one is actual. (List C, No. 7, 1 August 2000).

In 2004 I provided a much more detailed response to a co-respondent’s [quote] ‘in the now’ [endquote] phantasies.

Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: The example you gave about moving from here to there, etc., is exactly what dawned to me 10 years ago, and I used it to prove there is no time. Every moment I am in the now ...
• [Richard]: If I may interject? More than a few peoples have experienced being ‘in the now’ (aka being in the moment and/or being in the present and/or being in the here and now and so on) and have reported the feeling/intuition of being timeless – and that it proves there is no time (the word timeless means ‘no time’ just as deathless means ‘no death’) – yet that is not what I am reporting/ describing/ explaining at all ... let alone ‘exactly’.
• [Co-Respondent]: [Every moment I am in the now] ... and only memory says that I am passing from intermediate position in space. You are using exactly my words as in tape recorder.
• [Richard]: No, not at all. If you were to re-read what I wrote (further above), plus what I have written elsewhere on this topic on many an occasion, you would see I am saying that one is just here, at this location, right now, at this moment – and not ‘in the now’ (or ‘in’ the here and now, or ‘in’ the moment, or ‘in’ the present, and so on) – and that it is never not this moment (which by no stretch of the language can be construed as ‘there is no time’ or that it is timeless).
I even state categorically (further below in this post you are responding to) that time is actual. Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘... my original impression of this thread was that the time itself doesn’t exist in actuality’.
• [Richard]: ‘Time itself (as in durationless time/ eternal time/ beginningless and endless time) does indeed exist in actuality: time as a measure of the sequence of events (as in past/ present/ future) is but a convention.
Presumably some pre-historical person/persons noticed what the shadow of a stick standing perpendicular in the ground did such as to eventually lead to the sundial – a circular measure of the movement of a cast shadow arbitrarily divided into twelve sections because of a prevailing duo-decimal counting system – and then to water-clocks/ sand-clocks and thence to pendulum-clocks/ spring-clocks and thus to electrical-clocks/ electronic-clocks and, currently, energy-clocks (aka ‘atomic-clocks’) ... with all such measurement of movement being a measure of the earth’s rotation whilst in orbit around its radiant star.
Put succinctly: it is not time itself (eternity) which moves but objects in (infinite) space’. [endquote].

In short: the identity within is forever locked-out of time (time as an actuality, that is, and not time as a convention).
• [Co-Respondent]: Why though this did not change me?
• [Richard]: Going by your description – ‘what dawned to me 10 years ago’ – it was a realisation and, unless a realisation is acted upon, it remains just that ... a realisation.
‘Tis just as well though (otherwise you would have been yet another ‘Timeless One’), eh? (Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 44h, 15 August 2004).

All of the above leads this account back to your ‘please correct me if I’m wrong’ email – your 11th post (already quoted towards the beginning of this email) – wherein you go on to detail just whom it was that implanted this ‘in the moment’ meme which features throughout your 230+ emails to this forum.

(There is no prize for guessing who those closet-spiritualists are).

Vis.:

#151xx
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 07:38:46 -0000
To: actualfreedom@yahoogroups.com
From: [Respondent]
Subject: Dealing with negative emotions.

• [Respondent]: [...]. Here is my understanding of the actualist method, please correct me if I’m wrong: Make a sincere attempt to *enjoy the moment* by cultivating an interest in the sensuousness of the world around you at all times. Take time to ‘smell the flowers’ in the most profound way possible. Find the perfection *in the moment* and realise the inherent perfection in the world. Delight and revel in it. [emphases added]. [...].
Tarin’s algorithm had this one option where if you feel bad you find the reason why you can’t experience perfection *in the moment* and ask yourself ‘is this worth missing out on perfection *in this moment*?’ then go back to being feeling But sure I could just say ‘no its not worth missing out on perfection, life is beautiful wheeeeee!’ and how would I know that I’m not subtly deluding myself and doing a bit of positive thinking?.
Further down the algorithm he says if you can’t *enjoy the moment* to find out the reason and then ask oneself again ‘is this worth missing out on perfection?’

I guess the other way is to acknowledge the feelings are ‘mine’ and ‘own’ them but see the perfection and wholeness in this as well. I could then delve into bad feelings and see how they arise due to my attachment to identities x, y, z etc. but this seems to take away *from the moment* and become just another analytical exercise.

Daniel Ingram seemed to suggest that the latter did not work for him in achieving a PCE as much as being *in the moment* was. [emphases added].

First, I know I have said it before (in message No. 11915) but it is worth saying again: ‘tis for reasons such as the above that I advised a self-acknowledged [quote] ‘sincere practitioner’ [endquote], upon being asked for clarification, to ‘stop listening to the affers, period’ (and to ‘cease aiming to be aff, forthwith’).

Vis.:

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/actualfreedom/conversations/messages/10915

(I am presuming, of course, that those purveyors of affism pronounce those [quote] ‘AF’ and/or ‘AFer’ [endquote] designators they use, for their mongrel state of ‘being’, in the way that the first syllable of, say, the word affectation is pronounced).

And I am again pleased to report how that ‘sincere practitioner’ not only turned their life around but has gone on and prospered, mightily, as a direct result of taking that advice.

*

Second, it should be obvious by now that the email exchange you addressed this current post of yours to was not [quote] ‘quite a shot in the arm’ [endquote] after all, inasmuch as your follow-up words – in your [quote] ‘I realised with this exchange more clearly than ever before the difference between enjoying the moment and conditional pleasure seeking’ [endquote] sentence – clearly refer to that hoary spiritual gnome of being/living ‘in the moment’ and/or ‘in the flow’ (and/or ‘in the present’ and/or ‘in the now’ and so on and so forth).

*

Lastly, and coming back to the remainder of your current email (your ‘quite a shot in the arm’ response in #161xx), here it is in an edited-for-brevity context.

Vis.:

• [Respondent No. 44]: (...). I had a lot of fun tonight with friends. All we did was sit, talk, and joke around. It was fun. But once I got back home or started driving the less festive atmosphere started to set in. (...). This particular sequence of events has happened to me before, but I usually find that the crash back into my less festive world is hard and heavy. I get lost in my cynical or glum thoughts that life isn’t always fun. But not so this time as when I realize this is happening I remember and pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive. And just the fact that this is the only moment of being alive is enough to dispel all of those thoughts as I realized at one point that to go anywhere else is to go into the world of imagination. (...). When I get lost in thoughts or feeling reality then I immediately pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive. I do find that the initial layer is the layer of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. I eventually get to a point where everything seems empty. I stick with it and try not to ‘move’ anywhere and eventually the fascination that it is this moment sets in and I am once more enjoying life. (...). (Dec 30, 2013; #161xx)

• [Richard]: (...). Your initial email – reproduced here as #161xx further above – almost prompted me to write a comment, when you posted it, as it clearly pinpoints the difference between a caused/ conditional enjoyment (‘I had a lot of fun tonight with friends’/ ‘all we did was sit, talk, and joke around’) and an uncaused/ unconditional enjoyment (‘the fascination that it is this moment sets in’/ ‘I am once more enjoying life’).

A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event. (...). (Jan 2; #16153)

• [Respondent]: This is quite a shot in the arm. I realised with this exchange more clearly than ever before the difference between enjoying the moment and conditional pleasure seeking. I was riding my bike today thinking about how someone had said something to make me sad, because it reminded me of [whatever]. I tried to cheer myself up by thinking contrary thoughts. Then I yanked my head away and looked at the trees waving about in the warm summer air. They seemed gay to a point of being ridiculous. The whole world looked ridiculously gay and merry in a baffling way. The world seemed to be turning in on itself. It was stupendous! (12:35 AM; #161xx)

Do you not see, upon a closer read-through, that although I definitively say ‘dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event’ you report how you looked at [quote] ‘the trees waving about in the warm summer air’ [endquote] which are clearly both things (‘trees’ and ‘air’) and events (‘looked at’ and ‘waving about’) by any definition of those two words?

More to the point, I also definitively say ‘perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless)’ solely by virtue of being alive/being here – as in, regardless of doing anything at all/of anything at all happening – as an engaged response to my co-respondent reporting just that ... to wit: ‘eventually the fascination *that it is this moment* sets in and I am once more enjoying life’ [emphasis added].

(Doing something pleasant/beneficial – or something pleasurable/beneficent happening – is a bonus on top of the sheer delight of being alive/being here).

This is why I oft-times say ‘it is all so simple here’ (here in actuality/ this actual world/ the sensate world).

Nothing, but nothing (no matter how unpleasant/ detrimental), can ever take away this sheer delight of being alive/being here at this very moment; one could be in solitary confinement, on that infamous bread and water diet, in some insalubrious penitentiary somewhere otherwise utterly displeasureable without this peerless perfection – this ‘perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless)’ purity of life itself/ existence per se – wavering one jot.

Verily, this verdant and azure planet is a pristine paradise.

Regards,
Richard.

Jun 09 2015

Re: Moral cap and Authority

RICHARD to Claudiu: Yes, the better example [of where nothing was owned and where one could help oneself to whatever was available] is indeed ‘before civilisation’ as to ‘stake out a territory and start farming it’ marks the shift from a ‘free-range’ life-style to the ‘property-rights’ way of life (and, thereby, to the arising of a ‘peasant-mentality’).

To explain: for a hunter-gatherer, the free-range life-style was epitomised by, basically, just helping oneself to whatever was available. With the advent of the property-rights way of life, however, any such ‘helping oneself’ transmogrified into being theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera. Millennia later, all of this results in feeling-beings atavistically harbouring a deep, primordial *feeling* of being somehow disfranchised – the instinctual passions, being primeval, are still ‘wired’ for hunter-gathering – from some ancient ‘golden age’, wherein life was in some ill-defined way ‘free’ (e.g., ‘The Garden of Eden’), such as to affectively underpin all the class-wars (between the ‘haves and have-nots’) down through the ages.

Unless this rudimentary *feeling* of disfranchisement – of *feeling* somehow deprived of a fundamental franchise (franchise = the territory or limits within which immunity, privileges, rights, powers, etcetera may be exercised) – is primarily understood (to the point of being viscerally felt, even) any explanation of ‘peasant-mentality’ will be of superficial use only.

A footnote appended to a 2005 online response of mine is as good a place to start as any. Viz.: [...snip remainder of post...].

JON: Is it fair to say that there has never been a time where an individual could just help himself to what he wanted? Even in the hunter-gather days, individuals and groups had to work quite strenuously to feed their bellies and protects themselves from danger. And their gains were probably stolen by alpha males and more powerful groups as well as floods, drought and plague. With that in mind, it would seem that the atavistic harboring of a deep primordial feeling of being somehow disenfranchised developed right along with the evolution of the species from early primate to man. As opposed to having developed after warlords appropriated the land and produce. Another question: Is it fair to say that the feeling of being disenfranchised (and its associated feelings of resentment, envy, cynicism, and so on and so forth) is baseless? No one is disenfranchised (franchise = the territory or limits within which immunity, privileges, rights, powers, etcetera may be exercised) in part because no one has ever had it (the strong have always had power over the weak but were in turn subject to up-and-coming adversaries as well as injury and illness) but mostly because one can chose to not ignore what life and the universe actually is.

RESPONDENT: Richard I had similar doubts as Jon re: the ‘helping oneself’ as a hunter-gatherer bit.

RICHARD: G’day No. 45,

As you will probably be aware by now I responded in detail, with suitable quotes plus relevant references, so as to demonstrate how each and every proposition and speculation in that above post – about which you say you ‘had similar doubts as Jon’ regarding the way in which the free-range life-style, for a hunter-gatherer, was epitomised by, basically, just helping oneself to whatever was available – is either beside the point or invalid. Viz.:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/actualfreedom/conversations/messages/19624

As Jon replied shortly afterwards (in Message № 19627), indicating that they were [quote] ‘burdened by prior assumptions’ [endquote], it may be helpful to particularly bear in mind the ‘beside the point’ aspect as you read what follows.

The point being, of course, that the free-range life-style, for hunter-gatherers, was epitomised by, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available (whereas, with the advent of the property-rights way of life, any such ‘helping themselves’ transmogrified into being theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera).

RESPONDENT: Hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon had to be quite careful about the territory they were permitted to forage in and were subject to brutal raids by other tribes.

RICHARD: The fact that hunter-gatherers, being driven by the same instinctual passion of territoriality as modern day feeling-beings are, were thereby subject to territorial warfare is beside the point insofar as to ‘forage’ – as in, ‘to wander in search of food or provisions’ (American Heritage Dictionary), for instance – in that manner (i.e., within any such tribal territory as was thus forcefully demarcated) was not a matter of theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera, but rather a case of, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available therein.

So there be no misunderstanding: nowhere have I suggested the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of peace and harmony (either personal peace or communal harmony) or that it be preferable over capitalistic enterprise (be it privately-owned or publicly-owned capitalistic enterprise).

Indeed, the ability to generate capital – so essential for the elimination of poverty, for the maximisation of health and safety, for release from debilitating manual labour (from having to ‘earn the daily bread by the sweat of the brow’), for the proliferation of the arts and sciences, and so on – is of inestimable benefit.

RESPONDENT: I too would ask a similar question re: the fundamental nature of the disenfranchisement.

RICHARD: Okay ... the most ‘fundamental’ aspect of all, then, is illustrated by the distinction between my deliberate usage of the word ‘disfranchisement’ and the word ‘disenfranchisement’ (which both you and Jon used) as the word franchise – derived via the now obsolete usage of the word frank, from the Late Latin francus, meaning ‘free’ – refers to the ‘condition of being free’ (the noun suffix ‘-ise’, occurring in loanwords from the French language, indicates a quality, condition, or function).

Viz.:

• frank (adj.): an obsolete word for free, generous; C13: from Old French franc, from Medieval Latin francus, ‘free’; identical with Frank (in Frankish Gaul only members of this people enjoyed full freedom). (Collins English Dictionary).

Thus the word disfranchise refers to being deprived, lacking or having lost that original ‘condition of being free’ (‘original’ as in having been free in the first place) inasmuch the prefix ‘dis-’, being privative, indicates a negation or absence.

Viz.:

• dis- (pref.): a prefix occurring orig. in loanwords from Latin with the meanings ‘apart, asunder’ (disperse; dissociate; dissolve); now frequent in French loanwords and English coinages having a privative, negative, or reversing force relative to the base noun, verb, or adjective: disability; disarm; disconnect; dishearten; dishonest; dislike; disobey. (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Whereas the word disenfranchise refers to being deprived of an enabled or caused ‘condition of being free’ (as in, having a previously granted freedom withdrawn, for instance) as the prefix ‘en-’ forms verbs with the general sense of enabling or causing someone/ something to be in the condition, state or place referred to by the word it prefixes.

Viz.:

• en- (pref.): cause to be in a certain condition: enable; [e.g.]: encourage, enrich, enslave; a prefix forming verbs that have the general sense ‘to cause (a person or thing) to be in’ the place, condition, or state named by the stem. (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Now, while this distinction may initially appear to be pedantry on my part it serves, nevertheless, as a useful illustration of how relatively little time it has taken – despite the vast majority of the millions of years of human development, prior to the ‘free-range’ life-style being hijacked by the ‘property-rights’ way of life, over which our human/ hominid ancestors lived an original condition of being free to, basically, just help themselves to whatever was available (and I have seen plausible estimates of it being 99.8% of those millennia) – for modern-day thralls to atavistically feel and thus intuitively think of their ancestral disfranchisement as being a prehistoric disenfranchisement.

In other words, the domination of the enthrallers has been of such an all-encompassing/ far-reaching magnitude as to be interiorised and personalised so completely it is ‘second-nature’ for the enthralled to automatically think of their ancestral ‘free-range’ franchise – that heritable condition of being free to, basically, just help themselves to whatever was available – as having been an antediluvian enfranchisement (i.e., an endowed ‘free-range’ right granted in primeval times) which, being a bestowment, is subject to rescindment.

One of the reasons I provided ‘The Garden of Eden’ as an example of some ancient ‘golden age’ wherein life was in some ill-defined way ‘free’, in my initial post at the top of this page, is because of it being such an archetypal case of ‘that which can be given is that which can be taken away’ (and taken, what is more, with creatorship impunity). Howsoever, the edenic mythology has an extra twist to its knife insofar its disenfranchisement is the fault of the disenfranchised – not of the disenfranchiser as is the everyday reality – and, as such, redemption requires total obedience (a.k.a. complete surrender) to the enfranchiser.

The many and devious ways and means whereby upwards of at least 98% or more of the peoples alive today are, in effect, in thrall to so few (yet obscenely rich) enthrallers are quite fascinating to contemplate as the continuance of such thralldom depends solely upon the ongoing complicity of the enthralled.

Hence the term ‘peasant-mentality’.

RESPONDENT: Still it must be said that the sheer magnitude of disparity in resource distribution we have today cannot really compare to that of a hunter-gatherer life, where the elders/ chieftains aren’t that much better off resource wise.

RICHARD: Indeed so ... and, furthermore, due to the inexorable law of mathematics all usurious ‘resource distribution’ (a.k.a. wealth) eventually, and quite predictably, shifts into the hands of an elite few.

RESPONDENT: Also the fact that this has led to this all encompassing economic system of servitude that runs our lives is very much the product of property rights.

RICHARD: Yes, and the way in which that alienation of the very earth beneath our feet – the source and nourishment of life itself – from the vast majority of the peoples it engenders and sustains, by a minority of those persons for the maximum enrichment of that commandeering few, has thus far escaped world-wide criticism and condemnation as ‘a crime against humanity’ is a prime example of the ‘peasant-mentality’ in action.

RESPONDENT: I don’t think the ‘buy in’ for hunter-gatherers was as insidious and comprehensive as the world we live in today. Perhaps the hunter-gatherer life, while not perfect, was a bit more relaxed and a better fit for our animal bodies and animal instincts than the current rush-rush-rush world?

RICHARD: Oh, goodness me, no ... in no way at all is the hunter-gatherer lifestyle ‘a better fit’ for flesh-and-blood bodies with the instinctual passions/the feeling-being formed thereof still in situ. For just one instance: via studies carried out around the world it can be reliably estimated that upwards of 25% of a tribe, over an average tribal-member’s life-span, perished in inter-tribal warfare (as compared with around 2-5% of a nation in 20th Century inter-national warfare).

For example, the first-hand account recorded by Mr. William Buckley, on pages 42-44 of a 1852 book titled ‘The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Thirty-Two Years a Wanderer Amongst the Aborigines of the then Unexplored Country round Port Phillip, now the Province of Victoria’, provides a unique insight into what the almost constant state of warfare of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle really entailed and, what is more, comparatively so as well as he fought in the Napoleonic wars in the short-lived Kingdom of Holland in the early 1800’s.

(Mr. William Buckley, an escaped convict, having lived on his own amongst the hunter-gatherers of the south-eastern coast of Terra Australis in the years before any Caucasian settlement anywhere at all in that area provides a unique insight into the hunter-gatherer lifestyle there because of it being, at that time, a lifestyle totally-unaffected by any subsequent settlement many years later).

Viz.:

• [Mr. William Buckley]: ‘As I have said in the early part of this narrative, I had seen skirmishing and fighting in Holland; and knew something therefore, of what is done when men are knocking one another about with powder and shot, in real earnest, but the scene now before me was much more frightful – both parties looking like so many devils turned loose from Tartarus. Men and women were fighting furiously, and indiscriminately, covered with blood; two of the latter were killed in this affair, which lasted without intermission for two hours; the Waarengbadawas then retreated a short distance, apparently to recover themselves. After this, several messages were sent from one tribe to the other, and long conversations were held – I suppose on the matters in dispute.

‘Night approaching, we retired to our huts, the women making the most pitiable lamentations over the mangled remains of their deceased friends. Soon after dark the hostile tribe left the neighbourhood; and, on discovering this retreat from the battle ground, ours determined on following them immediately, leaving the women and myself where we were. On approaching the enemy’s quarters, they laid themselves down in ambush until all was quiet, and finding most of them asleep, laying about in groups, our party rushed upon them, killing three on the spot, and wounding several others. The enemy fled precipitately, leaving their war implements in the hands of their assailants and their wounded to be beaten to death by boomerangs, three loud shouts closing the victors triumph.

‘The bodies of the dead they mutilated in a shocking manner, cutting the arms and legs off, with flints, and shells, and tomahawks.

‘When the women saw them returning, they also raised great shouts, dancing about in savage extacy. The bodies were thrown upon the ground, and beaten about with sticks – in fact, they all seemed to be perfectly mad with excitement; the men cut the flesh off the bones, and stones were heated for baking it; after which, they greased their children with it, all over. The bones were broken to pieces with tomahawks, and given to the dogs, or put on the boughs of trees for the birds of prey hovering over the horrid scene.

‘Having apparently gratified their feelings of revenge, they fetched the bodies of their own two women who had been killed; these they buried with the customary ceremonies’. (www.archive.org/stream/lifeandadventur00morggoog#page/n63/mode/1up).

And so it goes, page after page of a ‘raw-footage’ account which undeniably exposes the (highly-politicised) modern-day narrative – whereby the ills which notoriously plague indigenous communities are virtually all the fault of ‘whiteys’ having dispossessed erstwhile hunter-gatherers from an idyllic living-in-harmony-with-nature lifestyle – which seeks to maximise ‘colonial guilt’ for a fiduciary-style perpetual recompense.

RESPONDENT: I do feel guilty mooching around at times. It does seem that the master-slave apparatus has been thoroughly internalised. Is this a question of the social identity type disenfranchisement piggy-backing on our primordial disenfranchisement?

RICHARD: As a social identity – a mental-emotional construct (a.k.a. a ‘conscience’) inculcated verbally, affectively and psychically according to a particular society’s cultural mores (mores or moeurs = ‘folkways of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a social group’ ~ Webster’s College Dictionary) – is a mental-emotional embodiment of particularised societal/ cultural mores and, as any society’s mores have that primordial disfranchisement as a central cultural feature, then any ‘social identity type’ disfranchisement intuitively felt is that very primordial disfranchisement.

Put simplistically: one and the same thing.

RESPONDENT: I am somewhat socialist leaning so I do see the current liberal capitalist or state-capitalist global order as being fairly rotten.

RICHARD: All political ideologies, being identity-based or rooted-in/ stemming-from many and various an identity in situ (i.e., born of feeling-beings’ core desires for feeling-beings’ self-centric advantage), are as rotten to the core as any of its constituent identities are.

For example:

September 23 1999

• [Co-Respondent]: Also, in my opinion, modern psychiatry and psychology are for the most part a failure because they (...) are often merely concerned with helping people to adjust, cope, and adapt to a sick, crumbling, and corrupt society.

• [Richard]: (...) it is not because a society is ‘sick and corrupt’ (no society is ‘crumbling’ because all cultures throughout 5,000 years of recorded history and maybe 50,000 years of pre-history have always been ‘sick and corrupt’). A society – any culture, anywhere in the world, anywhen through the aeons – is ‘sick and corrupt’ because each and every person who makes up that society is ‘sick and corrupt’. This condition is called ‘The Human Condition’. (../richard/listbcorrespondence/listb37.htm#23Sep99).

*

August 22 1999

• [Richard]: ‘(...) by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am defiled; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am corrupt through and through; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how sincerely and earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting. By ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am rotten at the innermost core’. (../richard/listafcorrespondence/listaf07.htm#22Aug99).

RESPONDENT: Not that I think communism or socialism is the answer. Because those can be perverted too. But I do think that the present system breeds a great deal of covetousness and comparison in everyone.

RICHARD: Any political system ‘breeds a great deal of covetousness and comparison in everyone’ (just as any socio-economic system, any politico-philosophical system, and so on, does).

Viz.:

January 11 2006

• [Co-Respondent]: Richard, I remember you saying that what the West represents in terms of culture/ civilization (individualism, liberal democracy, market economy, etc.) is threatened/ undermined by Eastern spiritual concepts.

• [Richard]: You are obviously referring to this:

• [Richard]: ‘... western civilisation, which has struggled to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance, is in danger of slipping back into the supernatural as the eastern mystical wisdom, that is beginning to have its strangle-hold upon otherwise intelligent people, is becoming more and more widespread. The ancient wisdom has even infiltrated modern physics’.

Or this (a variation on the theme):

• [Richard]: ‘I do appreciate science and have the highest regard for facts – it is what enabled western civilisation to get out of superstition and medieval ignorance – hence the concern that it not be taken over by the metaphysicists who would have future generations slip back into the supernatural’.

The only occasion I have discussed democracy with you was in regards to Christianity (and not eastern mystical wisdom). Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Capitalism in my view is a more fortunate [than Communism] mixture between Christianity and instinctive drives.

• [Richard]: ‘The primary distinction between capitalism and communism, as currently and previously practised, is the private ownership of property/ means of production (privatisation) versus the public ownership of property/ means of production (nationalisation); the secondary distinction is a representative democracy (regular competitive elections for governance) versus a non-representative autocracy (non-competitive elections or imposition of governance); the other distinctions lie in the areas of accountable jurisprudence versus unaccountable jurisprudence, freedom of speech (uncensored media) versus restricted speech (censored media), freedom of association/ assembly versus restricted association/ assembly, freedom of contract versus restriction of contract, and freedom of religion versus restriction of religion (all of which involve issues of public policing versus secret policing) ... apart from the freedom/ restriction of religion issue where is Christianity part of the mixture?

The Christian god not only owns everything, but is totally autocratic, arbitrarily imposes judgement, despotically punishes dissention, condemns proscribed association/ assembly, has an authoritarian insistence on an exclusive contract ... and secretly spies on everyone (all of which makes the most notorious dictator but a rank amateur by comparison).

However if you can somehow manage to love this god you will be loved in return ... but even that is a matter of caprice (grace)’.

• [Co-Respondent]: To me, it seems that the danger is broader and includes, above all, demographics. In a few generations, Europe will not be the place we now know ... and not for the better. I also think that the Western Civilization is helping its own extinction via fancy concepts like multiculturalism ... something akin to a suicidal gesture. There’s no better example than the country/ society you currently live ... and I’m speaking of trends. I can see no solutions though ... except maybe for a ‘white Australia policy’. Values are not actual, okay ... but some are better than others. What’s your practical take on this?

• [Richard]: The following encapsulates my practical take on sociological issues/ societal values as well:

• [Richard]: ‘I do not seek to advise anybody on what to do, or not do [in regards to political issues], and I have stated the reason why on many an occasion ... for example: [quote]: ‘I have oft-times said that I have no solutions for life in the real-world ... the only solution is dissolution’. [endquote]. Which means I have no solutions for governments either ...’.

Just so there is no misunderstanding ... when I say I have no solutions for life in the real-world I am referring to systematised solutions like political change, social reform, economic reconstruction, cultural revisionism, and so forth. For instance:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I have a first hand experience that this [communism] could only lead to hypocrisy, theft, corruption, greed; even brain-washing won’t work, these instincts have an innate ability to turn almost anything to their own advantage and fulfil their priorities.

• [Richard]: ‘Any system brought about by political change, social reform, economic reconstruction, cultural revisionism, and so on, is bound to fail, no matter how well thought out, because blind nature’s genetically endowed survival passions, and the ‘being’ or ‘presence’ they automatically form themselves into, will stuff it up again and again.

I have seen this repeatedly on the familial level, on the local community level, on the national level, and on the an international level ... plus, more pertinently, on the partnership (marriage/ relationship) level.

Unless one can live with just one other person, in peace and harmony twenty four hours of the day, nothing is ever going to work on any other scale’.

(../richard/listafcorrespondence/listaf25j.htm#11Jan06)

RESPONDENT: I feel very much like a white-collar peasant. Engaged in the rat-race to get to the top and realise there is nothing there ala what John Lennon and your friend spoke about.

RICHARD: What is there at the top is, of course, money/ assets, fame/ prestige and, especially, power – albeit a puny power, being over people (to have them do as bid), and not a potent power, as over the physical world (to directly effect beneficial material modification) – but there is ‘nothing there’ of intrinsic value (as in, nothing of significance, in the ‘meaning of life’ significance, that is).

RESPONDENT: I can relate to the Stockholm Syndrome aspect quite well too.

RICHARD: Good ... capture-bonding (i.e., loyalty to ‘the system’ in this context), when unexamined, enables the continuance of complicity (as already mentioned further above) with its especially insidious loyalty.

RESPONDENT: Professional training is one of gladiatorial combat, where one vies with others to become a member of a small officially sanctioned professional cabal that has a strong financial incentive to maintain the current hierarchy (Training, safety etc. are the other reasons cited - which are quite sensible. Somehow though I think these are secondary). Naturally this inculcates the symptoms you talked about. However I’ve had deep suspicions about ‘the system’ for a while. In some sense this that has lead to my being less focussed on accumulating wealth, assets, prestige, being career focussed etc. than many of my peers. But I wonder if I go far enough.

The question I have for you is: Can you elaborate some more on becoming aware of this peasant mentality - specifically as it relates to practising actualism?

RICHARD: Essentially, seeing-through the whole sick-and-sorry system and, thus, ceasing to believe in it, is all what is required.

The identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago found it incredibly liberating to no longer be able to believe in it/ be capable of loyalty to it ... especially so as ‘he’ had been quite the rebel up until then (the ‘black-sheep’ of the family and all).

In a latter part of his response to your ‘Money as Debt’ post Andrew speaks of having tuned-in to this liberating aspect.

Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘(...). From Richard’s posts and the ensuing discussion/ clarifications, I’m also beginning to get a clearer sense now of how the primordial *feelings* of resentment, the peasant mentality and the current monetary system are related’. (Message № 196xx).

• [Andrew]: ‘(...). I felt a liberating quality having this being discussed. Having it all tied together with actualism and being free of the human condition’. (Message № 196xx).

RESPONDENT: For instance would you recommend pragmatically minimising ones involvement in this system as a necessary (or helpful) condition to becoming actually free? Thanks.

RICHARD: Not necessarily, no ... actualism practice works best in the market-place.

Both feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ and feeling-being ‘Peter’ minimised their respective income-streams, within a year or so, but that was more because they valued their time over money than any other reason.

Plus the more one enjoys and appreciates being alive simply by being here, each moment again for as much as is humanly possible, the lower the cost-of-living becomes as less and less discretionary spending is used-up in purchased entertainment, in socialising expenditure (e.g., fashion-house attire, designer-driven accoutrements, status-displaying automobiles, and etcetera), in mood-enhancement payments, in novelty-seeking travel costs, and so on and so forth.

Golly, come to think of it, actualism should accrue quite a few brownie points for being so ... um ... so environmentally-friendly!

Regards,
Richard.

July 28 2016

Re: Near Actual Caring

CLAUDIU: Hi Alan. In 23080, you wrote:

Needless to say, this will never result in the genuine article that is an actual freedom from the human condition.

ALAN: And anyone with a modicum of sensibility (not obscured by personal feelings) will easily appreciate that what I was referring to (near actual caring) and what Richard was referring to (caring for the other as an ongoing modus operandi and the basic instinct of nurture in action) are two completely different things. This is especially obvious given the qualifiers I included – with no reserve, no holding back anything whatsoever – which is not the case in the “caring” which Richard was discussing. (Message № 23190; Tue, 26 Jul 2016)

[...remainder of post elided...].

RESPONDENT: I thought that the final step i.e. self-immolation, could indeed be construed as a putting of others before self.

RICHARD: G’day No. 45,

First of all, what follows is the text starting at the top of the web page which Claudiu linked to further above – in regards to what he described as “this putting the other before oneself” topic – as part of his engaged response to Alan’s “placing the other’s happiness before my own” depiction of what “giving myself 100% to another” means to Alan when put into practice.

Viz.:

R: Most Religions and Spiritual Paths advocate putting the other before oneself ... it is their way of preventing selfishness – which they assume to be identical with self-centredness. Yet it is self-centred to want to be a ‘good’ person and therefore gain one’s post-mortem reward in some after-life. Immortality for the self has to be classified as being the ultimate self-centredness. Self-centredness is translated as egotism ... is there such a word as ‘soultism’? There should be!
Let us have a look at the practice of putting the other before oneself: Take us four sitting here – and presume we are all ‘good’ people – and I am not going to be ‘selfish’ at all. Therefore I am going to totally look after (Q) ... I will put her before me in all circumstances. Now, (Q) is also a ‘good’ person and she is not going to be ‘selfish’ either ... so she is going to put Q(1) before herself. However, you have also been brought up with this religious and humanitarian concept of putting the other before oneself ... therefore you will put Q(2) before yourself ... and Q(2) will be putting me before himself. We have come a full circle; do you see the nonsense that is going on? Because the end result of putting the other first is that eventually you get looked after anyway. If we all just stop this charade and start looking after ourselves then we will be a lot better off. It makes much more sense.
Q: Then nobody owes anybody anything ...
R: There is no investment.
Q: ... and nobody owes me anything, either.
Q(2): There is no relationship.
R: No relationship ... right! It is a free association. (Richard, Audio-Taped Dialogues, Putting the Other before Oneself).

As you can see the topic is essentially about being self-centred – with especial attention upon that term referring to each and every ‘self’ being both ego-centric and soul-centric – in respect to the religio-spiritual practice of countering selfishness, which religio-spiritualists generally equate to self-centredness, via putting each and every other ‘self’ before one’s own ‘self’ (a.k.a. being an unselfish ‘self’).

Now, the incident to which Claudiu responded thusly was when feeling-being ‘Alan’ placed the affective happiness of feeling-being ‘Joan’ before the actual happiness of flesh-and-blood Alan (otherwise depicted as “giving myself 100% to another” in Message № 23179) being apparent 24/7 by forgoing ‘his’ second attempt at ‘self’-immolation, there-and-then, due in the main to feeling-being ‘Alan’ already being about an hour late for their prearranged rendezvous.

In other words, feeling-being ‘Alan’ prioritised the (potential) affective happiness of feeling-being ‘Joan’ – a conditioned happiness, dependent upon the situation and circumstances, and of a temporary nature – over the (potential) actual happiness of flesh-and-blood Alan – an unconditioned happiness, due solely to being alive/ being here as a flesh-and-blood body only, and of a permanent nature – which happiness also has the priceless advantage of having no trace of any malice whatsoever to later supplant it.

(Incidentally, note well how no mention is made of the then-current affective happiness of feeling-being ‘Alan’ – voice-recorded at-the-time as being “I am *so happy and excited* that I am going to meet the person I am closest to on the intimacy scale (...) I know it is going to be *a very enjoyable* day” [emphases added] – having the obvious potential of being at least sustained, at that then-current level, if not even further enhanced).

Furthermore, and given that Alan portrays that prioritising of affective happiness over an actual happiness as being a “near actual caring” further above, it is pertinent to point out that an actual caring is epitomised by an ever-present preference for the self-imposed suffering of one’s fellow human being to come to an end, forever, sooner rather than later.

For instance:

• [Richard]: “(...) the difference between you and me is that I actually care about my fellow human being and will leave no stone unturned, if that be what it takes, to understand them, to comprehend why they say what they do, so as to facilitate clarity in communication ... I like my fellow human being and prefer that their self-imposed suffering come to an end, forever, sooner rather than later”. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No.74f, 2 February 2006).

Thus the “caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” that Vineeto wrote about (as quoted by Claudiu much further above) – which appears to have become known as a ‘near-actual caring’ these days – is self-evidently a caring which prioritises an actual happiness over an affective happiness any day of the week (else it be a gussied up real-world caring masquerading as a caring which is as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster).

And now that the incident in question has been brought to its due notice then your above thought – as in, “I thought that the final step i.e. self-immolation, could indeed be construed as a putting of others before self”, that is – can be addressed in an applied fashion.

RESPONDENT No. 45: Otherwise what would be the reason for calling it biological altruism? A mother who throws herself in front of a train to protect her baby is clearly doing this.

RICHARD: Here is a typical example of what is to be found on The Actual Freedom Trust web site in regards to ‘self’-immolation, in toto, and the word ‘altruism’.

• [Richard]: “There is an intrinsic trait common to all sentient beings: self-sacrifice. It manifests in humans in the way that ‘I’ will passionately defend ‘myself’ and ‘my group’ to the death if it is deemed necessary. All of ‘my’ instincts – the instinctive drive for biological survival – come to the fore when psychologically and psychically threatened, for ‘I’ am confused about ‘my’ presence, confounding ‘my’ survival and the body’s survival. Nevertheless, ‘my’ survival being paramount could not be further from the truth, for ‘I’ need play no part any more in perpetuating physical existence (which is the primal purpose of the instinctual animal ‘self’). ‘I’ am no longer necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am nowadays a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die (to allow the body to be killed) for a cause and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a ‘Noble Ideal’ ... and reap ‘my’ post-mortem reward: immortality.
This is called altruism ... albeit misplaced.
Thus when ‘I’ willingly and irremunerably ‘self’-immolate in toto – both psychologically and psychically – then ‘I’ am making the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make *for this body and that body and every body* ... for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘my’ moment of glory. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘my’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed ... to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60, 3 December 2003).

And again:

• [Richard]: “The word altruism can be used in two distinctly different ways – in a virtuous sense (as in being an unselfish/ selfless self) or in a zoological/ biological sense (as in being diametrically opposite to selfism) – and it is the latter which is of particular interest to a person wanting to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, as it takes a powerful instinctive impulse (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinctive impulse (selfism) ... blind nature endows each and every human being with the selfish instinct for individual survival and the clannish instinct for group survival (be it the familial group, the tribal group, or the national group). By and large the instinct for survival of the group is the more powerful – as is epitomised in the honey-bee (when it stings to protect/ defend the hive it dies) – and it is the utilisation of this once-in-a-lifetime gregarian action which is referred to in my oft-repeated ‘an altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice/ ‘self’-immolation, in toto, *for the benefit of this body and that body and every body*’”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 83, 7 February 2005).

The only way in which the above text [quote] “could indeed be construed as a putting of others before self” [endquote] is by having the word “others” quite uncharacteristically refer to ‘this body and that body and every body’. For example:

• [example only]: ‘I thought that the final step i.e. self-immolation, could indeed be construed as a putting of this body and that body and every body before self’ [end example].

Here, then, is the 64-dollar question to ponder: did feeling-being ‘Alan’ put ‘his’ body and the body inhabited by feeling-being ‘Joan’ and every other body on the planet before feeling-being ‘Alan’ in that incident whereby ‘he’ placed the affective happiness of feeling-being ‘Joan’ before the actual happiness of flesh-and-blood Alan (otherwise depicted as “giving myself 100% to another” in Message № 23179) by forgoing ‘his’ second attempt at ‘self’-immolation there-and-then?

*

Lastly, as a feeling-being does not give themself 100% to another feeling-being via placing that other feeling-being’s happiness before their own then it is most certainly misleading to present that age-old religio-spiritual practice of ‘putting the other before oneself’ as if it were the way to go about doing so.

More to this point: it is a matter of public record that on the first occasion in which the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was finally able to give ‘himself’ completely to a woman – totally and utterly – she was so busy fantasising about a current heart-throb pop singer she never even noticed there was no longer any aspect of that ‘me’ hiding from view and/or holding aloof in an ultra-cautious and/or ever-futile reserve (as in, who or what on earth had ‘he’ been saving ‘himself’ for all that long while).

Viz.:

• [Richard]: “(...) back when I was a normal man I came close to the loss of self already mentioned on several occasions (in my first marriage) only to instinctively pull-back, out of instantaneous fear at such imminence, as it intuitively seemed she would thus take over my mind and make me her slave for ever and a day.
It was not until after the four-hour PCE, which initiated the process resulting in an actual freedom, that it became obvious to me what such loss of self actually meant.
Accordingly, I deliberately set out to induce a PCE via giving myself completely to her – totally and utterly – whilst hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm (something which I had discovered whilst pubescent).
And then ... !Hey Presto! ... no separation whatsoever.
(Incidentally, rather than that intuitive fear of thus being her slave coming true it was quite instructive to have her then relate how she had been fantasising about a current heart-throb pop singer all the while I was giving myself to her totally)”. (Richard, List D, No. 6, 10 November 2009 and No. 20, 9 December 2009).

You will surely notice how giving oneself 100% is all about the ending of self-centredness – self-centred as in being both ego-centric and soul-centric – and has nowt to do with placing another’s happiness before one’s own [a.k.a. being an unselfish ‘self’].

*

Incidentally, neither will being in love do the trick either (as was amply demonstrated by the instigator of the ‘mother of all kerfuffles’ back in January 2012).

Regards,
Richard.

RESPONDENT NO. 45 (Part Two)