Actual Freedom ~ Frequently Asked Questions

RESPONDENT No. 23: Such conversation – similar to that which is going on in this forum – is engendered by fear. We are that fear. Do you know how to end that fear?

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: How would you do that?

RICHARD: It is not a question of how would I end that fear ... it is a question of how did I end that fear. Basically, it involves all that I have written about since I came onto this List ... it is the extinction of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety that results in a total and utter dissolution of fear itself. There is no fear here, in this actual world where I live. Not even disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness or apprehension, let alone anxiety, fear, terror, horror, dread or existential angst. There is no fear in a flower, a tree, an ashtray, an armchair, a rock ... only sentient beings experience fear. Fear is affective; it is an emotion, a passion, and as such is not actual. Fear is a feeling, not a fact.

All sentient beings are born with certain distinguishing instincts, the main ones being fear and aggression and nurture and desire. They are blind nature’s – rather clumsy – software package designed to give one a start in life. Contrary to popular belief, they are not hardware, but like all software, they can be deleted ... instincts are not set in concrete. These instincts form a rudimentary self – an emotional entity – situated in the reptilian brain at the top of the brain-stem, in all animals. The human animal, with the unique ability to know its impending demise – and the capacity to think and reflect – has taken this rudimentary self and blown it up all out of proportion into an identity ... no animal has an ‘I’ as an ego in the head, or a ‘me’ as a soul in the heart.

All discussion about fear eventually turns around death. This is a fact that needs be faced squarely. To not be is inconceivable; it is impossible to imagine not being because all one has ever known is being. There are no terms of reference to compare against – which is the normal way of thinking – and with no comparison there is no possibility of thought dealing with the fact of death. If pursued diligently, thought gives up the attempt and stops ... it cannot proceed further.

The affective rushes in to fill the gap left by the absence of thought and fear turns to dread ... contemplation of extinction invariably turns fear to dread. The instinct to survive takes over and dread flips to its opposite: awe. As it says in some revered scriptures: ‘Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom’. Most religious and spiritual tracts refer to awe and dread when contemplating the majesty and mystery of some transcendental being lying beyond time and space. Temporal transience is replaced by a firm conviction in a timeless and spaceless divinity that antedates birth and postdates death. Driven by the instinct for survival at any cost – blind nature is rather clumsy – one attempts to transcend the duality of Life and Death and achieve immortality.

If successful, ‘I’ disappear and mysteriously reappear as ‘Me’, the eternal soul. One is then apparently without fear because one is ‘Deathless’ ... one is ‘Unborn and Undying’. One disseminates one’s findings to all and sundry, finding a multitude of gullible penitents willing to suspend reason and rationality for a chance at avoiding extinction. Such strange goings-on are the way that the denizens of the real world deal with the existential dilemma of facing the facticity of death’s oblivion. It is called being in a state of denial ... and results in avoidance and escapism. One’s native intelligence is nowhere to be found operating in all this.

What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites ... there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be ... just like before birth. Where is the problem?

The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem ... backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the four basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary self, transformed into an identity, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this pernicious entity.

‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. As this flesh and blood body only, I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in time and this place in space.

Extinction releases one into actuality ... and this actual world is ambrosial, to say the least.

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

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

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

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

It is all very, very simple.

*

RESPONDENT: I have tried to eliminate fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RESPONDENT: How can such a thing act upon itself?

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

RESPONDENT: Can it?

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

RESPONDENT: Does it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

RESPONDENT: If I see that fear is at the base of everything then do I really need to know anything else?

RICHARD: If you see that fear is at the base of everything then that seeing is the ending of fear, period.

RESPONDENT: Don’t I just need to understand the fear?

RICHARD: Where there is no fear there is nothing to understand.

RESPONDENT: ... I want to do it but there is a sense of hopelessness about it. The sense of hopelessness drowns out any feeling of true caring.

RICHARD: So, as the sense of hopelessness drowns out the feeling of caring, then start with where one is at now (where one is not yet at will emerge of its own accord as one proceeds): as you say ‘I want to do it’ for ‘me’ then that is where ‘I’ am at now. Do ‘I’ feel the feeling of wanting (aka desiring) to do it for ‘me’ or not?

RESPONDENT: A feeling of fear has emerged now. ‘I’ feel cornered. I don’t want to do it for ‘me’ because ‘me’ is in control now and ‘me’ is not having any of ending ‘me’.

RICHARD: As the feeling of being cornered is where one is at now then that is where one starts from: as you say that ‘a feeling of fear’ has emerged this is a vital opportunity to look closely at the fear itself (while it is happening) and it will be seen that there are two aspects to fear ... the frightening aspect and the thrilling aspect.

Usually the frightening aspect dominates and obscures the thrilling aspect: shifting one’s attention to the thrilling aspect (I often said jokingly that it is down at the bottom left-hand side) will increase the thrill and decrease the fright as the energy of fear shifts its focus and changes into a higher gear ... and, as courage is sourced in the thrilling part of fear, the daring to proceed will intensify of its own accord.

But stay with the thrill, by being the thrill, else the fright takes over, daring dissipates, and back out of the corner you come.

*

RESPONDENT: ‘I’ am telling myself that ‘I’ don’t really want to do it because that will be the end of ‘me’.

RICHARD: Ahh ... now to the nub of the issue: have you ever desired oblivion?

RESPONDENT: I have desired oblivion but not now. Fear has taken over and ‘I’ want to hide from this inquiry. ‘I’ feel cornered and want to back out. ‘I’ am looking for a way out so I can stick to the known and keep surviving. ‘I’ am afraid of losing the known.

RICHARD: Other than retreating back into suffering there is no way out but oblivion ... and going into oblivion is not only a blessed release from the known it is ‘my’ moment of accomplishment as well. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘my’ life worth while.

It is not an event to be missed ... ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory.

*

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’. [endquote]. 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?

RESPONDENT: Because the end of suffering is the end of ‘me’.

RICHARD: Is this not another way of saying that, because of ‘my’ fear of death, ‘my’ current plan is to not yet set foot upon the path of no return?

*

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: I don’t have a plan.

RICHARD: Is this because your current thinking is that ‘no path will deliver the goods’ (further above)?

*

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: Yes.

RICHARD: Okay ... taking it one step further: ‘my’ fear of ‘my’ 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: Yes. ‘I’ am holding ‘me’ in place as directed by ‘me’.

RICHARD: Okay ... taking it that one step further again: ‘I’ am holding ‘me’ in place as directed by ‘my’ fear of ‘my’ death.

*

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.

RESPONDENT: Yes. ‘I’ see why ‘I’ am addicted to being ‘me’ (suffering) now. You said it well: ‘‘my’ fear of death makes ‘me’ addicted to suffering’.

RICHARD: Okay ... taking it that one step further yet again: ‘my’ fear of ‘my’ death makes ‘me’ addicted to ‘my’ suffering.

*

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

RESPONDENT: Yes, which seems unfortunate at the moment. I feel stuck and completely controlled by ‘me’.

RICHARD: Is it starting to become a little more obvious that ‘my’ survival fear and ‘my’ essential suffering is only happening in ‘my’ psyche (which is the ‘human’ psyche) and nowhere else? If so, have you ever wondered what is happening in that somewhere else whilst all this oh-so-real internal trauma is going on?

Or, to put that another way, have you never wondered what life after ‘my’ death would be like?

*

RESPONDENT: There is a feeling of dread now. I feel stuck and unable to proceed. There is nothing thrilling about it.

RICHARD: A deep feeling of dread, the abject intuition of impending doom, is fraught with foreboding, be it a grim, dire, or awful presage, and this intensely apprehensive trepidation is symptomatic of the existential angst (the anguish of the essential insecurity of being a contingent ‘being’) which underpins all suffering. As such an occasion of profound dread is an opportune moment to plumb the depths of ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being) ... rather than avoidance through realisation of the portentous event as all manner of phantasmagoria can be manifested by such evasion. With pure intent one can enable a movement into the existential angst, rather than despairingly grasping at doomsday straws, which movement facilitates the bright light of awareness being shone into the innermost recesses of ‘my’ presence ... which is ‘presence’ itself.

Such an active perspicacity in ‘my’ moment of reckoning will reveal that ‘presence’ itself feeds off ‘my’ fear – it is its very life-blood as it were – and this functional acuity brings an abrupt end to its nourishment. Whereupon all-of-a-sudden one finds oneself on the other side of the wall (to keep with the ‘cornered’ analogy for now) with the hitherto unseeable doorway to freedom closing behind one ... and one is walking freely in this actual world where one has already always been living anyway.

All what happened was that upon ‘my’ exposure dissolution occurred and the Land of Lament sank without a trace.

*

RESPONDENT: I have desired oblivion but not now. Fear has taken over and ‘I’ want to hide from this inquiry. ‘I’ feel cornered and want to back out. ‘I’ am looking for a way out so I can stick to the known and keep surviving. ‘I’ am afraid of losing the known.

RICHARD: Other than retreating back into suffering there is no way out but oblivion ... and going into oblivion is not only a blessed release from the known it is ‘my’ moment of accomplishment as well. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement ... it makes ‘my’ life worth while. It is not an event to be missed ... ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory.

RESPONDENT: ‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now. ‘I’ can’t see how to get past that.

RICHARD: As there has been a, perhaps predictable, retreat back into suffering (predictable as foreshadowed in ‘‘I’ want to hide from this inquiry’ and ‘‘I’ want to back out’ for example), then one starts with where one is presently at (where one is not yet at will emerge of its own accord as one proceeds): as you say ‘‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now’ then for ‘me’ that is where ‘I’ am currently at.

Therefore, do ‘I’ feel the feeling of being stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) or not? If yes, then through staying with the feeling, by being the feeling (instead of trying to see how to get past that), one will find out, experientially, what it is really like to not have a path and/or not have a plan ... other than the one of ‘looking for a way out’ so that one can stick with the known that is.

It sure beats armchair philosophising any day of the week.

RESPONDENT: To be honest, actualism still scares me a lot of the time (even after a year). From a normal perspective, some aspects of it really are scary, no two ways about it. But sometimes a momentary glimpse of what lies beyond the human (animal) condition makes those fears and reservations seem quite laughable.

PETER: I was recently having a chat with someone who is just starting to become really fascinated with the human condition and how it operates. Our discussion soon turned to one particular aspect of the human condition that was pertinent to him at the moment. It turned out that there was something he was expected to do because it was as a duty that society demanded of him. He said that the first issues that came up were related to what others would think and feel about him if he didn’t do what he was expected to do. We chatted about the fact that what he was discovering was his conscience in action – the collection of morals, ethics and values that have been instilled in him to ensure that he remain a good and fit member of society. He also revealed that he was starting to become aware that there was a layer deeper than this level and it soon became clear as we talked that he was beginning to experience the instinctual passions in action.

He went on to talk about the instinctual compulsion in question, in this case nurture, as the issue related to his being a father. After we had talked about this for a while the subject moved on to fear because this particular issue had been worrying him for while – the worry he was experiencing was in fact the feeling of fear. After we had chatted for a while longer I asked him what had initially made him consider not doing what was both socially expected and instinctually demanded of him. He replied that he had recently come to understand the insidious nature of the human condition (he is an avid reader of Richard’s Journal and as a consequence has learnt a good deal about the human condition in a surprisingly short time), and because of this he finds that to continue doing what he is ‘expected’ to do, just because others expect him to do it, does not sit well with him at all.

As we discussed the issue further we agreed that it was simply a matter of integrity – once one clearly sees that one’s current course of action is not only harmful to oneself but also harmful to others, one’s own integrity impels one to act. It soon turned out that he had in fact already made the decision he was talking about which is why the feelings that he was having had come to the surface. As such, he wasn’t experiencing the pre-decision fears that usually manifest in the form of debilitating doubt, nor the stultifying type of fear that results in the freeze reaction of doing nothing – the ‘rabbit in the headlight’ reaction. Instead he discovered in the course of the conversation that he was experiencing the fear of the consequences of a course of action he had already committed himself to. In the end, he shrugged his shoulders and acknowledged that despite his fears, he was still going to do what his integrity demanded he do.

What particularly interested me in the conversation was that his feeling of fear manifested as what he called ‘worries’ – men being generally less demonstrative of their feelings than women, which means they typically tend to label them as unwanted or undesirable thoughts rather than what they are, unwanted and undesirable feelings – and that it was integrity that caused him to act despite these feelings arising. And the reason I was interested was that what he was saying accorded with my own experience.

His companion had a slightly different story to tell because her newly-found interest in the human condition had brought up feelings of fear in her as well, not as worry so much but as a keeping-her-awake-at-night, heart-felt, fear. She asked me what I did about fear when I first started to be an actualist. I had to think a bit because fear was not a big thing for me at the start of actualism – it was more a question of how long was I prepared to delay breaking with my past and heading off on a new adventure. I told her I soon became aware that fear was simply a feeling that came and went every now again, albeit very strongly at times, and that I had further become aware that it very often arose as a consequence of my having already decided to do something (or not do something) rather than as a precursor to making a decision.

She nodded as though she could relate to what I was saying and then said that the feelings of fear had become less lately and that she was lately more excited by the business of beginning to experientially understand the whys and hows of the human condition in action. Her face lit up as she began to talk about some of the things she had already discovered and freely asked questions about aspects that she had yet to explore. It became apparent to me that she had discovered that fear can readily be transformed into thrill once one begins to do what one only moments before had been experienced as being scary to do.

I won’t go on as the point of this story is not the discussion I was having, nor the particular people involved, but to make the point that you are not alone in the feelings you are having – in fact given the radical nature of actualism, it is only natural and normal to experience such feelings from time to time.

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