Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

RESPONDENT: ... Would you say that an addiction is the ‘me’ trying to cling to or recreate a ‘good’ feeling?

RICHARD: Indeed ... but there possibly is more to it than that (I was involved in a verbal discussion about this only a couple of days ago) as what may become obvious, upon closer investigation, is that ‘I’ can be as much addicted to the suffering, which ensues as the eventual result of the high evaporating, as ‘I’ am addicted to the high in the first place.

Arguably more so, perhaps, despite how perverse the notion may sound at first hearing.

RESPONDENT: I can see this in others although it is not readily apparent in myself. For example, I have heard gamblers say that they are just as addicted to losing as they are to winning. The only way I can relate this to myself is that it is the action I am addicted to and the action includes winning as well as the risk of losing.

RICHARD: I was not referring to whatever suffering may be caused by losing in gambling ... but to the suffering which ensues as the eventual result of the high evaporating (no matter what particular addiction it is). Therefore I presume that the ‘action’ you refer to is what provides the high ... and if so then I further presume that when this action-induced high evaporates then suffering ensues.

If this is the case then it is this suffering which is well worth investigating for its addictive properties.

*

RICHARD: ... I presume that the ‘action’ you refer to is what provides the high ... and if so then I further presume that when this action-induced high evaporates then suffering ensues. If this is the case then it is this suffering which is well worth investigating for its addictive properties.

RESPONDENT: Ok, there is suffering now. I just lost the last of the money in my online poker account. After a nice winning streak the last week or so suddenly the worm turned today and it was my worst nightmare. I didn’t play bad. It was just that my hands kept getting beat. I am shell shocked. I plan on quitting again by paying my friend a nice sum if I don’t. I hear what you are saying about investigating the suffering for its addictive properties. However, I don’t see how I am addicted to the suffering. It is the winning that seems to provide the high which evaporates upon losing and then there is suffering. The reason I can’t see how I am addicted to the suffering is because I never intend to lose. I never know if or when I am going to lose so suffering is not assured. If I am addicted to the suffering I don’t know it. I will keep looking at it. However, I will go ahead and send the email now while I am in the midst of the suffering. It looks like if one is addicted to suffering they will want to cause the suffering and I can’t see how this is the case with me. The truth is I want to play some more now.

RICHARD: Okay ... I will come at it from another direction then: the bottom line of ‘me’ is suffering (obviously there are times when ‘I’ feel happy, when ‘I’ feel glad, when ‘I’ feel cheerful and so on but whenever those moments pass ‘I’ inevitably revert to ‘my’ default setting).

So, essentially ‘I’ am suffering and, as ‘I’ am addicted to being ‘me’ and being ‘me’ is suffering, ‘I’ am addicted to suffering ... it is ‘my’ very nature. What you are (presumably) experiencing right now is ‘me’ as ‘I’ really am when all of the external causes of happiness, gladness, cheerfulness and so on are stripped away ... and of course ‘I’ want to ‘play some more now’ because ‘I’ do not like being ‘me’.

Yet, perversely, ‘I’ am addicted to being ‘me’ ... and it is this addiction which is why there is no peace on earth.

RESPONDENT: This does make some sense to me. I can see that I am addicted to being me because that’s who I am and I don’t want to let go of that. I can also see that the essential ‘me’ is suffering when it is stripped bare. However, since ‘me’ is essentially suffering ‘I’ try to escape through various highs. Once these highs evaporate I am back to being ‘me’ suffering. Makes sense?

RICHARD: Yes ... and even though the highs inevitably evaporate ‘I’ still keep on trying to escape from being ‘me’ as ‘I’ really am via that path.

Why do ‘I’ persist in re-treading a path, over and again, that just does not deliver the goods?

*

RESPONDENT: ... I can see that I am addicted to being me because that’s who I am and I don’t want to let go of that. I can also see that the essential ‘me’ is suffering when it is stripped bare. However, since ‘me’ is essentially suffering ‘I’ try to escape through various highs. Once these highs evaporate I am back to being ‘me’ suffering. Makes sense?

RICHARD: Yes ... and even though the highs inevitably evaporate ‘I’ still keep on trying to escape from being ‘me’ as ‘I’ really am via that path. Why do ‘I’ persist in re-treading a path, over and again, that just does not deliver the goods?

RESPONDENT: That is a good question. What comes to mind is I keep treading the same path over and over because that is what I know. That is what is familiar.

RICHARD: Indeed it is ... so in order to successfully escape one needs to abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods, so that the energy one is frittering away fruitlessly is available for the unknown path, the unfamiliar path, the path that does deliver the goods.

RESPONDENT: I don’t know if the unknown path delivers the goods because I don’t know what it is.

RICHARD: Is not the reason why ‘I’ do not know if the unknown path delivers the goods – or why ‘I’ do not know what the unknown path is – none other than because ‘I’ will not abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods?

RESPONDENT: I only know that the known path does not deliver the goods.

RICHARD: And why will ‘I’ not abandon the known path that does not deliver the goods ... even when ‘I’ know that the known path does not deliver the goods?

RESPONDENT: The known path is ‘me’. That is who ‘I’ am.

RICHARD: As ‘I’ am suffering and suffering is ‘me’ then ‘my’ path is the path of suffering ... which is humanity’s path is it not? And, as humanity is suffering and suffering is humanity, is it not equally true that humanity is also addicted to suffering?

And further to that point ... have you ever noticed that humanity reveres its addiction so much that escape is taboo?

*

RESPONDENT: Upon looking at it further it appears that I am addicted to ‘me’ (suffering) but that I am also addicted to the escapes from the ‘me’.

RICHARD: Okay ... is the addiction to being ‘me’ stronger than the addiction to escaping from being ‘me’?

RESPONDENT: The addiction to being ‘me’ is stronger because it always wins out.

RICHARD: If ‘I’ am to be honest ‘I’ will have to acknowledge that the addiction to being ‘me’ has only always won out so far because so far ‘I’ have always sought escape from being ‘me’ via a path that ‘I’ know will not deliver the goods.

RESPONDENT: I always revert back to ‘me’ (suffering).

RICHARD: But now ‘I’ know why ‘I’ always revert back to being ‘me’, to being the very suffering ‘I’ am, do ‘I’ not?

*

RICHARD: I only ask because if the addiction to being ‘me’ is the more powerful addiction then successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods).

RESPONDENT: Actually, the known is ‘me’. That is what I know. I don’t know how to not tread the same path.

RICHARD: Is the reason why ‘I’ do not know how to not tread the same path none other than because successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods)?

In other words: do ‘I’ not continue to temporarily escape from being ‘me’ because permanent escape from being ‘me’ is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for?

*

RICHARD: Whereas if the addiction to escaping is the more powerful addiction then successful escape can (and will) happen.

RESPONDENT: The same escapes are also ‘me’. They are the known.

RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it like this: somehow, somewhere deep in the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself), ‘I’ already know, as ‘I’ always have known and ‘I’ always will know, just what it is that is to happen. In fact, all ‘I’ have been able to do, and all ‘I’ am able to do, and all ‘I’ will be able to do, is to keep on putting it off for another time ... any other time will do, in all reality, provided that it not be now.

Yet when the time comes it will be now ... because there is only now in all actuality.

*

RICHARD: Is not the reason why ‘I’ do not know if the unknown path delivers the goods – or why ‘I’ do not know what the unknown path is – none other than because ‘I’ will not abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods?

RESPONDENT: Yes, ‘I’ am not willing to abandon the known path. ‘I’ am the known path. ‘I’ cannot abandon ‘I’.

RICHARD: Are you not saying, in effect, that ‘I’ am not willing to abandon the path of suffering (‘the known path’) because ‘I’ am suffering and suffering is ‘me’ (‘I’ am the known path’)? Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘I can see that I am addicted to being me because that’s who I am and I don’t want to let go of that. I can also see that the essential ‘me’ is suffering when it is stripped bare.

In other words: ‘I’ cannot abandon the path of suffering (‘I’ cannot abandon ‘I’) because of ‘my’ addiction to suffering (‘I am addicted to being me’ ).

*

RICHARD: And why will ‘I’ not abandon the known path that does not deliver the goods ... even when ‘I’ know that the known path does not deliver the goods?

RESPONDENT: ‘I’ know that ‘I’ can survive on the known path because that is who ‘I’ am. There is fear of not surviving if I abandon the known path.

RICHARD: Is this not another way of saying that, because of ‘my’ fear of death, ‘I’ will carry on suffering for the rest of ‘my’ life?

*

RICHARD: As ‘I’ am suffering and suffering is ‘me’ then ‘my’ path is the path of suffering ... which is humanity’s path is it not? And, as humanity is suffering and suffering is humanity, is it not equally true that humanity is also addicted to suffering? And further to that point ... have you ever noticed that humanity reveres its addiction so much that escape is taboo?

RESPONDENT: Interesting. It does make sense that humanity is addicted to suffering but I am still not sure if it is addiction to suffering or if it is fear of not surviving. The fear of ‘me’ not surviving could be causing the addiction to ‘me’ suffering.

RICHARD: I should have put scare quotes around the word humanity as the word itself can refer to two different things: in its all-humankind meaning it is a more comprehensive word for what the word group refers to (which ranges through family, band, clan, tribe, race, nation and species) and, just as the group’s survival traditionally takes precedence over an individual’s survival, the group’s fears of not surviving have priority over an individual’s fears of not surviving. When fear comes into the picture, however, the word humanity no longer refers to all people collectively but takes on a life of its own, as it were, and becomes an entity in its own right in the same way ‘I’ am an entity inside the flesh and blood body.

And just as ‘I’ suffer because ‘I’ exist (suffering is ‘my’ very nature) ‘humanity’ suffers because it exists (suffering is very nature of ‘humanity’) and thus a virtue is made out of suffering because the survival of ‘humanity’ is at risk ... hence the taboo on escape

Yet ‘humanity’ has no existence outside of the human psyche.

*

RESPONDENT: The addiction to being ‘me’ is stronger because it always wins out.

RICHARD: If ‘I’ am to be honest ‘I’ will have to acknowledge that the addiction to being ‘me’ has only always won out so far because so far ‘I’ have always sought escape from being ‘me’ via a path that ‘I’ know will not deliver the goods.

RESPONDENT: My current thinking is that no path will deliver the goods. Any path I take is more of ‘me’ trying to escape from ‘me’.

RICHARD: Ahh ... but what about the path of no return? So far you have only ever travelled on the path that carries a return ticket. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘However, since ‘me’ is essentially suffering ‘I’ try to escape through various highs. Once these highs evaporate I am back to being ‘me’ suffering.

Given that the price of the return ticket is yet more suffering – a life-time of suffering in fact – why is it that the price of a one-way ticket is considered too high a price to pay?

What price the end of suffering, eh?

*

RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it like this: somehow, somewhere deep in the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself), ‘I’ already know, as ‘I’ always have known and ‘I’ always will know, just what it is that is to happen. In fact, all ‘I’ have been able to do, and all ‘I’ am able to do, and all ‘I’ will be able to do, is to keep on putting it off for another time ... any other time will do, in all reality, provided that it not be now. Yet when the time comes it will be now ... because there is only now in all actuality.

RESPONDENT: Yes, there is only now in actuality and ‘I’ can’t do it now because I am not ready.

RICHARD: As not being ready implies getting ready, in all reality, then what is your plan?

RESPONDENT: The fear of ‘me’ not surviving is keeping me from doing it now.

RICHARD: Which is another way of saying that ‘my’ fear of death keeps ‘me’ alive.

RESPONDENT: Fear is holding ‘me’ in place. ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’.

RICHARD: Which is another way of saying that ‘I’ am holding ‘me’ in place.

RESPONDENT: Fear of not surviving is making ‘me’ addicted to being ‘me’.

RICHARD: Which is another way of saying that ‘my’ fear of death makes ‘me’ addicted to suffering.

In short: it is all in ‘my’ hands and ‘my’ hands alone.

RESPONDENT: Thought I’d better add a little more to my reply, so we can get back on track in our discussion. (... ...) You see, appalling as it might at first seem, it has never really mattered to me whether a source of insight came from a sage or a madman, a well-grounded philosopher or a psychotic street musician, a family man or a freak of nature, the poised or the spastic, a man of honesty and integrity or a hypocrite and a plagiarist.

RICHARD: Sure ... I gained useful information from many, many people over many, many years: the most valuable information, however, came from those that put their words into practise (those that spoke from their on-going experience).

For example: a heroin addict might say ‘drugs are detrimental to your well-being’ (and the explanation why from their own situation is useful information) ... but what an ex-heroin addict has to say is valuable information (because such a person knows how to free oneself of the addiction).

The corollary to this example is that maybe 6.0 billion peoples are addicted, as it were, to the human condition – and any one of them may say that it is detrimental to one’s well being and explain why – but the person that is free of the human condition knows how to be free of it.

Otherwise it is a case of the blind leading the blind.

KONRAD: Do you know, why it is so difficult to stop smoking?

RICHARD: I stopped smoking for five years back in 1979 ... and it was very easy. The physical withdrawal symptoms only lasted for three days and were not much of a problem at all ... after that it was down-hill all the way.

KONRAD: This is because smoking is a way to redirect your attention to something pleasant when you feel stress. Whenever there is stress, you can focus your attention to smoking. At a certain point this focusing to smoking in a stress situation becomes so automatic, that the stress not even enters consciousness. This is the principle of addiction. The particular thing you are addicted to does not matter. Only its capacity to redirect attention from suffering is important. Some means are better than others, and some are outlawed, while others are not. Still, the principle is the same.

RICHARD: And if there is no stress – ever – in your life? Where does your theory go to then? And I also drink coffee ... what dreadful secret does this information reveal to you? However, I do not touch alcohol – or any other drug – whatsoever. What does this indicate?

And will I get any brownie points for being a teetotaller?

RESPONDENT: You are either totally demented or smoking something besides nicotine – or maybe both.

RICHARD: If you had read all of my response to the smoking question , instead of snipping it halfway, you would have the answer to your speculation about the ‘something else besides nicotine’ already. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘I am a teetotaller in all other respects (not even caffeine these days)’.

RESPONDENT: By the way, nicotine addiction is the foremost drug addiction in the world.

RICHARD: I have read reports that it can be as difficult an addiction for some people to break free of as, for example, heroin (I have no personal experience of heroin so I can only go by other people’s reports).

I experienced no difficulty whatsoever the last time I ceased smoking ... I simply desisted.

RESPONDENT: The craving for nicotine enslaves it victims for yet another and another and another hit.

RICHARD: One of the benefits of an actual freedom from the human condition is that one is free from enslavement ... thus religio/spiritual ‘no-no’s (such as smoking tobacco, eating meat or dairy products, drinking tea/coffee, being sexually active, using physical force/restraint where applicable, living in comfort and/or luxury and so on) do not apply. If you apply the religio/spiritual yardstick you will, of course, find all manner of things to point the finger at.

In the interests of having a someway reasonable discussion I would like to point out that I live in suburban comfort ... why then do you not see me as enslaved to social security, electricity, mail deliveries, garbage disposal, hot and cold running water, sewerage, refrigeration, television, washing machine, soft bedding, supermarkets, medicines, police protection, planes, trains, buses and taxis, paved roads and so on and so on (almost ad infinitum)?

Is it because your particular trip is about meat, sex and tobacco?

RESPONDENT: You call that ‘actual freedom’, much less an ‘ambrosial paradise,’ or even better yet, ‘pure?’

RICHARD: No ... it is you who has applied the description ‘enslaves’ (and in a previous post ‘enslavement’ ) and not me. My answer now is the same as before. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘In no way am I considering to burn you at the stake for new and revolutionary discoveries. I would more than likely banish you for your own [quote] ‘struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement ... even those conditions which enslave them’ [endquote].
• [Richard]: ‘But I am in no way enslaved (I am freed of any enslavement) ... and that which was detrimental to advancement is gone forever.
• [Respondent]: ‘You appear to be enslaved by some state of being to which you have given the name, ‘actual freedom’.
• [Richard]: ‘In what way am I ‘enslaved’ by being actually free of the human condition? In what way am I ‘enslaved’ by being rid of the ‘I’, the ‘me’? In what way am I ‘enslaved’ by being no longer capable of anger or anguish ever again? In what way am I ‘enslaved’ by living in the already always existing peace-on-earth?

This may be an apt place to remind you that I lived for five years in what I call my ‘puritan period’: I whittled all my worldly possessions down to three sarongs, three shirts, a cooking pot and bowl, a knife and a spoon, a bank book and a pair of nail scissors ... I was homeless, itinerant, celibate, vegan, (no spices; not even salt and pepper), no drugs (no tobacco, no alcohol; not even tea or coffee), no hair cut, no shaving, no washing other than a dip in a river or the ocean. I possessed nothing else anywhere in the world and had cut all family ties ... whatever could be eliminated from my life that was an encumbrance and an attachment, I had let go of.

In other words: whatever was traditionally seen as an impediment to freedom I discarded. Towards the end of that period I lived in total isolation and silence for approximately three months on uninhabited tropical islands off the north-eastern Australian seaboard ... paddling from island to island in a canoe.

You are way out of your depth when it comes to the subject of enslavement, addictions and attachments.

*

RESPONDENT: No where in this reply do I see where you made the statement that you do indeed smoke.

RICHARD: As there are at least two references that leave no doubt as to the assenting nature of my reply I do wonder, at times, just what qualifications a simple country girl from Arkansas has to have to be an English Teacher ... in fact the entire post is in the affirmative (which includes the question).

RESPONDENT: No. 39 never asked you a direct question of whether you smoked or not, and I do not assume a statement to a question never asked to be interpreted 100% correctly. Qualifications for teaching include spelling out the facts in black and white by means of a direct statement of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question.

RICHARD: Oh? This is how it works in practice when the answer is in the negative:

• [Query]: ‘I was wondering why you smoke when you know the facts about the harm that smoking does to the flesh and blood body?
• [Response]: As I do not smoke your question is a non-sequitur.

Instead of which I provided a four-paragraph detailed response ... which included at least two references in the affirmative. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘... all the furore (sometimes reminiscent of a witch-hunt) depends upon somewhat skewed statistical evidence. I say ‘skewed’ because if I were to die tomorrow my death would be added to the statistics irregardless of the actual cause’.

And:

• [Richard]: ‘... maybe it will suffice to say that (...) I am a teetotaller in all other respects (not even caffeine these days)’.

RESPONDENT: Now, as Richard, who claims to be an intelligent, actually free, happy and harmless blood and bones body has not unequivocally given a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ until now, I found a contradiction of terms in the statements ‘happy and harmless’ and ‘Yes, I do smoke.’

RICHARD: Okay ... this appears to be more truthful than your (further above) explanation: you have prejudged freedom vis-à-vis smoking tobacco therefore you cannot see that a four-paragraph considered response is in the affirmative (rather than a ‘as I do not smoke your question is a non-sequitur’ reply).

It has nothing to do with being qualified to be an English Teacher at all ... your prejudice blinds you to the obvious.

RESPONDENT: I, for one, cannot see that an intelligent human being would smoke; especially one who claims to be free.

RICHARD: Exactly ... which goes someway towards explaining why you snipped the latter half of my detailed response off.

RESPONDENT: I just wanted to be 100% certain about the issue.

RICHARD: Hmm ... was that so that you could make your prejudgements about tobacco smoking (and meat-eating) with surety in this and other e-mails? Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘I, for one, cannot see that an intelligent human being would smoke.

And:

• [Respondent]: ‘... nicotine addiction is the foremost drug addiction in the world. The craving for nicotine enslaves it victims for yet another and another and another hit’.

And:

• [Respondent]: ‘Oh? Toxic cigarette smoke is an enhancement to a happy and harmless body?

And:

• [Respondent]: ‘Cigarette smoking is completely intolerable to a sensitive body, as is eating carrion’.

And I would guess that not one of my extensive responses has even begun to penetrate, eh?

*

RESPONDENT: The craving for nicotine enslaves it victims for yet another and another and another hit.

RICHARD: One of the benefits of an actual freedom from the human condition is that one is free from enslavement ... thus religio/ spiritual ‘no-no’s (such as smoking tobacco, eating meat or dairy products, drinking tea/coffee, being sexually active, using physical force/restraint where applicable, living in comfort and/or luxury and so on) do not apply. If you apply the religio/spiritual yardstick you will, of course, find all manner of things to point the finger at. In the interests of having a someway reasonable discussion I would like to point out that I live in suburban comfort ... why then do you not see me as enslaved to social security, electricity, hot and cold running water, sewerage, refrigeration, television, washing machine, supermarkets, medicines, police protection, paved roads and so on and so on (almost ad infinitum)? Is it because your particular trip is about meat, sex and tobacco?

RESPONDENT: You call that ‘actual freedom’, much less an ‘ambrosial paradise,’ or even better yet, ‘pure?’

RICHARD: No ... it is you who has applied the description ‘enslaves’ (and in a previous post ‘enslavement’) and not me. My answer now is the same as before. Vis.: [Respondent]: ‘In no way am I considering to burn you at the stake for new and revolutionary discoveries. I would more than likely banish you for your own [quote] ‘struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement ... even those conditions which enslave them’ [endquote]. [Richard]: ‘But I am in no way enslaved (I am freed of any enslavement) ... and that which was detrimental to advancement is gone forever.

RESPONDENT: Oh? Toxic cigarette smoke is an enhancement to a happy and harmless body?

RICHARD: If you had actually read my response to the smoking question you would have the answer to your speculation about the ‘enhancement to a happy and harmless body’ already ... plus some discussion about the extent of toxicity.

Have you noticed that the [quote] ‘struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement ... even those conditions which enslave them’ [endquote] came from a paragraph on the cognitive dissonance peoples display when it comes to exploring something new to human experience ... and specifically, in the instance being discussed, a way to end all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides which epitomises the human condition? If so, do you further notice how you have adroitly deflected the discussion, on a Mailing List set-up to investigate such matters, into a routine discussion about tobacco smoking and meat eating instead (which deflection is but one form of cognitive dissonance in action)?

Furthermore ... did you take any notice whatsoever of my paragraph (at the top of this page) on the value of the blanket application of the traditional religio/ spiritual yardstick to something new to human experience (which application of the known onto the unknown is but another form of cognitive dissonance in action)?