Actual Freedom – Selected Writings from Richard's Journal

People get married with love as the basis of their relationship, hoping that love will cure the desperate loneliness caused by separation. If this love cannot make a marriage work – and by work I mean promoting peace and harmony and a lively zest for living – then how can it be expected to work on a community level? The same applies to a country; patriotism and nationalism are but a larger version of belonging, of community spirit. And on an international level the rot becomes obvious, humanitarian ideals notwithstanding. Just look at the incurable failure of the ‘International Community’ to achieve peace and harmony and prosperity for all. The United Nations Organisation, and its fore-runner, The League of Nations, are prime examples of the failure of the ‘cure’ of community spirit. It is only the individual person who can facilitate effective change, bringing peace, vitality and vividness into daily life. A person’s character is formed by the essence of their ‘being’... and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind.

One has ‘been’ in the past, one is ‘being’ in the present, and one will ‘be’ in the future. That ‘being’ is what one calls ‘I’, taking it to be me; me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will be ... this sense of continuity, an instinctual entity called ‘me’ existing over time, is not me as-I-am. I do not exist over time; I exist only as this moment exists, and now has no duration. Therefore I am never lonely, for there is no separation; there is only actual intimacy. Whereas ‘I’, out of loneliness, attempt to bridge the separation between ‘myself’ and others similarly afflicted with ‘being’, via emotions – be it affection, love, pity, sympathy, empathy or compassion – to induce an artificial intimacy. The problem with emotion is that it is fickle; one can switch it on and off. A person can be said to be generous with their love … or parsimonious. Such illusory intimacy is unreliable, dependent upon predilection, mood and receptivity. Actual intimacy – the direct experience of the other – is ever-constant; it is not in the control of a wayward ego or a compliant soul.

It cannot be switched on or off, given or withheld. It is not ‘mine’, it is simply here, all of the time. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Eight

It starts at the beginning of the relationship: A man and a woman are initially separate, they meet, fall in love, feel totally accepted, appreciated and loved for being who they are ... everything is rosy. They want to spend all their time together, the sex is marvellous … until the love diminishes, the ‘honey-moon’ is over, and they start feeling their separation once more. This brings frustration, they blame each other for not being loving enough. ‘You never bring me flowers any more’, or ‘You are no longer the sexy woman you once were’.

One starts to become irritated by the other’s character traits – which one used to find so endearing when one was in love – one starts to niggle, one begins to pick fault, one attempts to hurt the other. One picks a fight, after which there is often a silent going your separate ways. One feels bad. The one who ostensibly started the fight begins to feel sorry: if there is sufficient remorse, the other will forgive. The love flows again, one makes promises, trust is restored – one has ‘made-up’ – until next time, that is. This entire process of love, hurting, anger, remorse, forgiveness and then love again is learned behaviour. And nobody seems to question the validity of this time-honoured process. Does it work? Does it produce a lasting intimacy? Does it produce perennial peace and harmony? Does it produce perfection? Is there something original, authentic, genuine, that will? <... >

‘Man’ and ‘woman’ are in two separate camps; it is as if they are two different races. So they start from separation ... and love seems to promise to bring them together, to provide the intimacy they all long for. But my question is: why are humans separate to start off with? Is it an actual separation – apart from the physical differences – or have humans been trained into an artificial separation? Is one not conditioned to think – and feel – as a ‘man’ and as a ‘woman’? Has one not taken on a gender identity and think and feel it to be ‘me’? So is there not an artificial entity, an ‘I’, that one takes to be me as I actually am? One’s most intimate ‘being’ is a fiction anyway, so any gender identity overlaid is equally false. If ‘I’ am false, artificial, then any connection – a bridge – between two psychological entities can only be as artificial as the separation itself.

Love is this bridge. Love is artificial. Being artificial it needs constant stimulus to keep it ‘alive’. Therefore, the moment it starts to sag, the cycle automatically swings into action; frustration, niggles, fights, hurt, resentment, remorse, repentance, forgiveness, promises ... then back to love and trust again. Although everybody promises each time, in contrition, to forgive and forget, they never do. The promise to forgive and forget is never carried out. The hurt, frustration and anger is unconsciously stored away, adding to the already existing resentment that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ feel toward each other for being separative in the first place. This entire process has no chance of producing anything other than an artificial intimacy. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Three

Why does one feel the need to have faith and to trust another? To trust someone indicates a lack of confidence in oneself, and faith indicates a lack of certainty about living in general. All things happen for many reasons and it is useless to apportion blame ... the emotional investment in blaming is debilitating and prevents the clarity necessary for honest appraisal. Likewise the ardent stake one places in faith and trust to produce the desired effect is also enervating ... and it leaves one open to self-induced feelings of betrayal. People have been taught to have faith and to trust – or not to have faith and not to trust – somebody or some event, without ever questioning whether the action of faith and trust itself is an appropriate tool for living one’s life. Can humans dispense with faith and trust altogether? It is not set in stone that faith and trust is a must; one can make one’s own way in life without carrying all that baggage of belief that humankind has been burdened with for centuries. What about knowing? With knowing, one has confidence.

Confidence and certainty renders faith and trust irrelevant. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Six

With no beliefs to defend, I have no differences to resolve. Most people try to resolve their different beliefs through compromise. Two people, holding on to their own beliefs, will get into an argument, a fight. They are separate. One is always trying to get the other to believe in their own belief through manipulation and persuasion ... and by giving or withholding love. The one who is stronger, the most adept in this, wins the other over. As neither can stand separation, they will grab any means to come together ... even if this means mutual concessions, or the swapping of one’s belief for the other’s.

Seeing that both beliefs are irrelevant, by virtue of the fact that they are beliefs anyway, they can dissolve completely. Then there is nothing to resolve, the problem itself is eliminated. Hence a permanent lack of conflict. With the absence of belief there are no more power battles over whose belief is ‘Right’. Separation is no more ... equity prevails.

The result is actual intimacy between autonomous individuals. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Seven

Actual intimacy – being here now – does not come from love and compassion, for the affective states of being stem from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love and compassion produces is but a meagre imitation of the direct experience of the actual. In the actual world, ‘I’ as ego, the personality, and ‘me’ as soul, the ‘being’ – both subjectively experienced as one’s identity – have ceased to exist; whereas love and compassion accentuates, endorses and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am relative to other similarly afflicted persons; vying for position and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials … to verify ‘my’ very existence. To be actually intimate is to be without the separative identity … and therefore free from the need for love and compassion with their ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth. There is an actual intimacy between me and everyone and everything … actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other as-they-are. I am having a superb time … and it is a well-earned superb time, too. Nothing has come without application – apart from serendipitous discoveries because of pure intent – and I am reaping the rewards which are plentiful and deliciously satisfying. Actual intimacy frees one up to a world of factual splendour, based firmly upon sensate and sensual delight. The candid and unabashed sensate enjoyment of being this body in the world around is such a luscious and immediate experience, that the tantalising but ever-elusive promise of the mystique of love and compassion has faded into the oblivion it deserves.

This is an actual freedom. It is possible to be actually free, here on earth, as this body, in this lifetime. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword

Please, do not confuse what I am talking of, which is an actual intimacy, with True intimacy. True intimacy lies in the delusory nature of Love Agapé, with its Divine Bliss. One can become lost in the Eternal Mystery, the Great Unknown. Beguiled and bewitched by the promise of Glory and Glamour and Glitz, one has every reason to be afraid ... one will have fallen under a Divine spell, intoxicated by The Sublime. Actual intimacy is innocence personified; a self-less experience characterised by blitheness and gaiety because of the marked lack of separation. There is no distance, psychologically speaking, between me and these birds, these flowers, these trees … and between me and you. Actual intimacy has nothing to do with love ... love is a bridge between two separate social identities, creating the illusion of intimacy. And Love – Love Agapé or Divine Love – gives one a feeling of Oneness, a feeling of Unity ... a sense of ‘Being’. Then we are back to ‘being’ again, this time ‘Being’ with a capital to denote Divinity. ‘Being’, in whatever form, is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind.

It is indeed very pleasant to be sitting here, discussing life and what human beings get up to. To while away the afternoon promoting peace and harmony and serenity is a delightful pastime, for there are days like this where I am inspired to simply sit and talk ... and I can talk plenty. This is just as significant – if not more so – than mowing and weeding and mulching. It is all on a par when one is living life as it is meant to be lived. It is truly wonderful to be here now, doing this.

Life is a most marvellous experience. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Eight

In a valiant attempt to remove doubt, passion can be brought into the search. Passion can produce love.

When ‘I’ experience love ‘I’ feel that life has meaning after all. Some brash souls have attained a state of Love Agapé, thereby believing that they have found the Ultimate Meaning. They have disseminated their findings to all and sundry down through the ages ... with ruinous results. They have led humankind astray, propelling people into the heights of hope ... before plunging them into the depths of despair, when their prognostications turn out to be invalid. Yet they continue to dish out rays of hope to their desperate believers … the demand for hope by an ever increasing population in despair creates the marketing of ‘feel-good’ enterprises, giving rise to a lucrative market for Spiritual entrepreneurs. Their product is love ... and the feelings that love induces: self-acceptance, self-worth, self-esteem and the feeling of being needed. All these feelings serve to prop up an ailing self ... yet love, however lofty, is fickle and manipulative and ‘I’ must be ever vigilant. ‘I’ consist of a kaleidoscope of emotions and passions and therefore doubt is still not far away. This can hardly be called a satisfactory destination for the quest into finding the meaning of life. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Seventeen

The Divine ‘Beings’ have been peddling their snake oil for centuries to no avail. Their time has come to either put up or shut up … how much longer than these thousands of years do peoples need to further test the efficaciousness of their failed Divine Message? If Love Agapé and Divine Compassion, for example, were the way to go, then there would already be global peace, as they have had two to three thousand years to demonstrate their effectiveness as being the ultimate solution. There is no ‘Peace On Earth’ … nor has there ever been; there has only ever been a truce from time to time between warring parties. To call these periods ‘peacetime’ is to misuse the word and make it mean something it does not.

In actualism it is readily experienced and understood that Divine Compassion – which is born out of sorrow – is but a paltry substitute for the over-arching benevolence of the actual world. Similarly, Love Agapé is seen and known to be a pathetic surrogate for the actual intimacy of direct experiencing … Love Agapé and Divine Compassion are deep feelings which the psychological or psychic identity within creates in order to sustain itself and perpetuate its self-centred existence. Love is born out of loneliness … or in the case of the Enlightened Ones, out of Aloneness … and is touted as being the cure-all for humankind’s failings because it imitates the intimacy of the actual via a feeling of Oneness. The feeling of Oneness creates an erroneous impression that separation is ended ... but the self survives triumphant, only to wreak its havoc in the real world once again. Life can be a grim and glum business in the real world, for separation ceases only when the psychological and psychic entity inside the body – the ego and the soul – is extirpated. In actual freedom there is a universal magnanimity which is so vastly superior to petty forgiveness or pardon that any comparison is worthless. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Introduction

We are sitting, a male and a female together, on the balcony over-looking the vast Pacific Ocean spread out to the front, in the early morning sunlight. The sun is sparkling and glittering atop a deep turquoise blue; the ocean’s foaming white waves steadily crashing with a deep roar, a mere hundred metres away, to the blinding-white sand of the beach; a beach which stretches virtually unbroken by headlands for kilometres in either direction from where I sit. I have just taken a shower and the sun’s warmth is a joy to my body. At this time of the year – about six weeks past mid-winter – although the nights are cold, the days are warm. It is very pleasant to be sitting here, basking in the gentle rays of sunshine streaming down upon the balcony. Its warmth seems to soak through the skin in a way that a hot shower or an artificial heater cannot. It is a tangibly intimate and palpable sensation, bringing with it a simple joy.

A drift of a breeze circulates around the balcony’s confines, ruffling my hair and hastening the drying process. It also ruffles the leaves of the potted plants, causing them to dance delightfully in the air about ... only to cease again, leaving all still once more. A neighbour’s radio is playing softly, the muted music coming pleasantly enough from their near distance. An occasional car goes past in the street below and far away, off near the blue horizon, a commercial jet-liner glints in the sunlight as it circles far out to sea preparatory to coming in to land at the airport nearby. The world of people, things and events is busy around me, as I sit here, in tranquil peace and ease.

It is simply exquisite to be sitting here, with an easy relaxation, secure not only in my own company, but in this glorious world I live in. There is an actual intimacy between me and my companion. Actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other. It is an actuality born out of pure intent. Pure intent is activated by paying intense attention – exclusive attention – to one’s peak experiences. This unwavering attention, without mincing words, amounts to an obsession; for how can a person possibly allow themselves to be unhappy and discontented when this world is such a marvellous place to be in? What a shame, what a pity ... no, what a sin it is to be disconsolate and miserable when this world is so glorious. To be here now, intimately here, is a satisfaction and fulfilment unparalleled in the annals of history. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Nine

Actual freedom needs no protection. If it does, it is not worthy of the name. The ‘freedom’ that is attained by those who have only dissolved the ego is as about as useful as fools gold is: it is all glitter and no substance. The allure of the psychic world – the world of the Collective Unconscious – has seduced those ‘graced’ few with its seductive Powers. Enchanted and bewitched by the promise of Glamour and Glory and Glitz, they have succumbed, entranced, to the most insidious of the fantasies of humankind. From the most ancient of Gods and Goddesses, which humans know of from classical history, to their modern counterparts, the Spiritual Leaders of humankind have a common vulnerability: just like secular leaders they are stuck in a pecking order. Their passion for Power, their lust for Love and their fervour for Fame, comes from the inevitable hierarchical structure dictated by the Power and Authority situated unmanifest behind the throne. This hierarchy, needed and created by the psychic entity’s need to maintain its identity and grow even bigger, has no end to it. It persists even into the spurious After-Life. The entity’s very existence as a Spiritual ‘Being’ is dependent upon it.

Inevitably, another religion grows up around them ... they are the genesis of yet another group. Another group means a new member in the wars between the existing groups. Thus Love Agapé and Divine Compassion do not deliver on their oft-repeated promise of Peace On Earth for the very obvious reason that they cannot. They never have done and never will. On the contrary, Love Agapé and Divine Compassion has produced war after war ... slaughter and cruelties unimaginable have been the sorry history of religious groups throughout the ages and into the current era. And just as Spiritual Love and Compassion cannot deliver perfection and excellence, so too does personal love and compassion fail just as miserably. A man and a woman meet, fall in love, and all is rosy. Their love and compassion for each other can conquer all ... it seems. Yet it never does because, just like Spiritual Love and Compassion comes from the instinctualised psychic entity, personal love and compassion is but a product of the socialised psychological entity. Love and compassion are not actual. In the same way that the identity is a creation, so too is its love and compassion … in whatever form. There is no such thing as Real Compassion and True Love ... no matter how much the religious and the romantics may protest it to be so. The evidence of the centuries does not substantiate their claim. Love and compassion simply cannot produce perfection and excellence because it has its built-in manipulation and corruption. Love and compassion does not come freely.

Actual perfection and excellence is free. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Twelve

I am here where I always have been. One has always been here … one has never been anywhere else. Where else is there but here? Here is perfection for there is no sorrow or malice anywhere. One realises that there is nothing outside of perfection … humans are all unwittingly living their life already in perfection. It is as if everybody is playing a game called ‘Let’s pretend we are lost’, knowing it will only ever be an illusion. Humans are creating the illusion so well that they take it for real … wrongly implying it to be actual. In actuality there is no animosity or anguish, only perfection. This perfection does not come from anywhere. It is already always here. I am not making it happen as ‘I’ did Reality, it is happening of itself. All is self-generating ... and so exquisitely intricate.

This is actual intimacy. To be actually intimate is to be without the separative identity. I am not apart from the universe … I am the universe experiencing itself. Whereas ‘I’ can never be intimate for ‘I’ am distanced from the actual by ‘my’ very ‘being’ ... ‘I’ stand in the way of actual intimacy. It is inevitable that this pure intimacy prevails in the actual for in actual freedom lies benignity; which literally means to be kindly, gentle, harmless, propitious. The intimacy that ‘I’ as a personality can have, as a feeling for another in a relationship, pales into insignificance when compared with the actual intimacy of the universe. There is no need for a relationship here. Relationship requires separate entities in order to do the relating. I am not separate from the universe. This body is literally made of the very stuff of the universe … there is no difference whatsoever between this stuff and me.

I am physically and actually it. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Fourteen

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Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

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