PETER: I don’t want to pre-empt your own experiential observations about the sorrowful feelings but in my own investigations I discovered that feelings of malice is more readily discernible than feelings of sorrow. Speaking metaphorically – malice can be experienced as being peaks or flare-ups of emotion, sadness can be experienced as valleys or troughs of emotion, whereas in general the constant plain or milieu of human feelings is one of seriousness and sullenness. The other observation I have made is that sorrow in the form of the feeling of compassion – the compulsion to participate in another’s suffering – is the essential emotion that binds Humanity together, and hence binds ‘me’ to Humanity. Which is why I described sorrow as being a strongest emotional tether to break free of.

RESPONDENT: What I just wrote to Vineeto fits well with what you wrote:

PETER: I remember one of the things I found telling in my early days of being an actualist was the realization that so much of what human beings regard as entertainment is rooted in malice and sorrow. Be it sad music, love songs or angry music, novels that are historical rehashes of old grievances, romantic novels, action films, video games, soap operas, news reports, competitive sports, and so on. I remember going through my CD collection and being astounded at the bitter-sweet feelings that most of the music engendered – so much so that I soon hustled most of them out the door.

As I said to No 52 in my most recent post to him, it is important to feel the quality of any feelings of malice and sorrow that surface before you nip them in the bud in order that you have an experiential understanding as to how and why the feelings and emotions that arise from the instinctual passions operate. By conducting your investigations in this scientific way, you feel the feelings as and when they are happening which means you neither repress nor dissociate from your feelings, and then get back to feeling good as soon as possible, which means you neither indulge in nor become overwhelmed by your malicious and sorrowful feelings. 

An intellectual understanding of the human condition is one thing – at best you know in theory what to look out for. But if you really want to become free of the human condition there is no other way but fully committing to a hands-on moment-to-moment attentiveness as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive – which means fully committing to being here as a mortal flesh and body in this world of the senses, with all that this involves.

As for the ‘tall poppy syndrome’, you only need to observe the revolving door of spiritualists who come to this list and head straight for Richard in order to cut him down a peg or two. And it is fascinating to observe how they are so convinced that they, and their ilk, are right – that the meaning of life is somewhere hidden in the ancient mumbo-jumbo of Eastern spirituality – and that we actualists are wrong, so much so that they have not the slightest interest in what is being talked about on this mailing list. They provide a wonderful opportunity to observe first-hand how holding on to any religious or spiritual belief or philosophy actively stifles any possibility of even considering the idea that something new has now been discovered – that it is now possible for any human being, so inclined, to become free of malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: Vineeto and others: I have been working with the Actual Freedom material for only about three months now and would like to provide a personal update: I have been both reading a lot of material ... sometimes several times ... and applying: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ throughout the day.

PETER: I can relate to reading things several times over. When I first came across Richard, he had just purchased a computer in order to be able to word process his journal and print it out. As the editing was finished, I had a copy of his journal as sheets printed on his inkjet printer in a loose-leaf binder and this was added to with several of the later chapters as they were produced. I have a distinct memory of sitting down with the journal and spending hours going over and over a 4 or 5 sentence paragraph, trying to understand exactly what it was that he was saying. In hindsight, this now sounds somewhat extreme but overcoming cognitive dissonance is the lot of everyone who attempts to ‘wrap their mind around’ something new.

This will become less of an impediment over time as more and more people from different backgrounds and different life-experiences write about the process of actualism. Not only will there be an increased variety of ways of saying the same thing but also there will be an increased confidence and comradery that comes from the knowledge that other fellow human beings are daring to tread the same never-trod-before path.

RESPONDENT: My early erroneous conclusion was that I could just jump in and use the process and would be that. I noticed, however, an underlying, solid reluctance to apply the process. I even found it very difficult to even remember what the question was! I finally got it imprinted into my brain.

PETER: Yep. I can relate to that one as well. I found it quite amazing to discover that ‘I’ ran on automatic almost all of the time – so much so that there was no possibility of being aware of how I was experiencing being alive. Great slabs of the day would pass by without me remembering to be aware of whether or not I was enjoying being alive or not. Even if I did remember, I often found it difficult to accurately describe how I was experiencing this moment, as I would usually come up with an intellectual response such as ‘I am concerned about …’, rather than the more explicit feeling response such as ‘I am feeling anxious’ or ‘I am feeling scared about …’.

It is good to remember that being constantly aware of how you are experiencing this moment of being alive is not a natural thing – after all, ‘I’ have so dominated the stage, for as long as I can remember, that glimpses of ‘self’-awareness only occurred rarely and erratically. It takes a good deal of conscious effort to establish asking the question until it becomes habitual and it takes a good deal of stubborn intent until it becomes a constant automatic silent question each moment again.

Because of these quite natural difficulties, beware of beating yourself up when you miss out asking the question because the very moment you become aware that you haven’t been aware of how you are experiencing this moment of being alive, you are right back on track again.

RESPONDENT: I then began to activate the investigation phase ... ie anything that appeared as an obstacle, right then, that prevented me from being happy and harmless. This was and is to some extent now the difficult one. This great reluctance surfaced time and time again. This came as a surprise since I also thought myself to be open to self-exploration. Nothing could be further from the truth. I recounted to myself how ... even in my past spiritual pursuits ... I would gloss over or skim quickly through a teaching that pointed to personal exploration. I discovered also how I have always felt pursued, chased, caught, dominated and even haunted by negative feelings of guilt, fear, inadequacy. And ... how these feelings dominate my days ... colour and cloud my life. In the early stages of investigation of these mental-emotional states ... I noticed my habitual response ... ‘don’t even go there!’ Yet I persisted.

PETER: What you are experientially discovering are the morals and ethics that have been instilled into you by your parents and peers – ‘It is not good to feel angry’, ‘It is not right to feel jealous’, ‘Why can’t you be quite like your brother’, ‘If you don’t stop doing that I’ll …’ and so on. The imposition of morals and ethics is a necessary process in every child’s development given that every child is by nature a passionately driven being, which means that your awareness of when, how and why these morals and ethics operate is yet another experiential discovery of the universal nature of the human condition. Name them and feel them as they are happening but don’t judge them, for it is vital to remember that what you are starting to become aware of is the instinctual passions themselves and these passions are universal – in no way uniquely personal.

The awareness of one’s own morals and ethics is a big hurdle to negotiate as they form a goodly part of one’s social identity. If one allows oneself to get stuck here, there is no way to discover the further layers of one’s identity that lay lurking beneath – that which is often referred to as the dark side of human nature. You will have noticed the essential piece of advice that Richard has offered when you allow yourself to start to feel the dark and invidious feelings – keep your hands firmly in your pockets – meaning don’t act on these feelings, simply become aware of them as they are happening.

The brutish survival instincts were an essential component of the predacious phase of the evolution of animate life on this planet and you will come recognize that they are not only redundant but you will also experience that these very passions ultimately stand in the way of you being able to live with your fellow human beings in peace and harmony.

RESPONDENT: Now, somehow, for the most part my attitude about the process has shifted. Most of the times now, there is an eagerness to investigate ... a certain excitement clicks in. In this regard, what has helped is an intent or deep resolve to face what ever it is ... to refuse to run and hide.

PETER: Persistence rewarded, hey.

Another hint that was passed on to me that I found useful was to remember not to take yourself too seriously. This is the trick to turn fear into excitement – and excitement is having fun. Excitement is a felicitous feeling when excitement is the thrill of becoming more happy and more harmless.

RESPONDENT: When I stand firm and face the feelings ... with the attitude and approach to want to understand ... not to demolish the feelings ... but really to be open to truly feel the feelings, to understand the meaning ... to desire to get at the very root of what is creating this block or obstacle that occludes, obstructs and prevents real or actual freedom in my life. So the fear and aversion of doing this very personal process of examining any and every obstacle that stands in the way has lessened. And for me this is quite significant.

PETER: Again I can relate. For me the most fear I encountered was prior to deciding to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless. After that the fear turned into the excitement of the thrill of discovery – and there is lots to discover.

RESPONDENT: I do want to bring up a concern that has been going over and over in my mind. I don’t know what to do with it ... so I’ll just spit it out and maybe it will dissolve in the ethers of cyberspace! Here it is...

PETER: Well, for a start there is no evidence to the contrary. Richard himself has done a good deal of trolling through the writings of others and all he has ever found is evidence of people who have experienced a spiritual freedom of the soul and not an actual freedom from the soul. I have also satisfied myself that this is so by my own investigations – I remember at one stage realizing that not only was Richard the only one who was actually free of the human condition, he was also the only genuine atheist on the planet.

In other words I take it as a reasonable assumption of fact because there is, thus far, not a skerrick of empirical evidence to the contrary.

RESPONDENT: Maybe there was a culture eons ago that discovered this ... maybe just one person ... and maybe the culture was in no way receptive to Actual Freedom ... so this individual kept it to his or her self.

PETER: Contrary to popular belief, speculations such as ‘maybes’ or ‘what ifs’ are not empirical evidence – no matter how many speculations or how many speculators there are.

I don’t know whether your reference to ‘a culture eons ago’ refers to the widely-held notion that there was somehow a Golden Age or that at sometime, somewhere on the planet, there existed a peaceful tribe of uncorrupted innocents. If so, there is no evidence that supports this notion in any way – the archaeological and anthropological evidence is that all tribes and all cultures were deeply fear-ridden, dominated by superstition, enraptured in mythology, fiercely territorial, and so on. I fail to see such tribes and cultures as being fertile ground for someone to be able to take the time and make the effort to become free of malice and sorrow.

The other notion – that maybe someone became free of the human condition and kept it to his self or her self – has been floated before but it is my experience that this theory lacks any credibility – simply because the intent needed to become free of the human condition is pure in that one does it not only for this body but for ever other body. Or to put it another way, the very process of wanting to become harmless is motivated by a genuine concern and caring for all of one’s fellow human beings and this alone makes the idea of keeping the discovery of an actual freedom to oneself a red herring.

RESPONDENT: And, even if Richards claim is true ... why make it? I mean no disrespect ... but I would like some feedback from anyone ... including Richard ... so I can go on with my life!!!

PETER: I remember that I could not but write my journal in order to tell others that the actualism method worked in that it produced down-to-earth results – that it was possible to live with a companion in utter peace and harmony and that it was possible to be virtually free of malice and sorrow. To imagine that one could keep an actual freedom to oneself beggars belief.

While on this topic, I’ll just add a note of sensible caution. In my early days of being an actualist I was so enthused that I would often talk about actualism to people who were not interested in anything else but battling it out in the real-world or who were so convinced their spiritual beliefs were right that they could not even conceive that what I was saying had nothing at all to do with spiritualism. I soon discovered that it pays to be prudent as to whom, where and when it is appropriate to discuss the discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition.

One other piece of sensible piece of advice I gave myself came from my time of exploring the dark underbelly of piety and morality – and that was to ‘never goad a fanatic’. I do like the leisure and the pleasure of being able to report my successes and share my experiences in using the actualism method here on this list from the safety and comfort of my own lounge room.

RESPONDENT: And Vineeto ... and all others ... thank you for all your helpful words of instruction, explanation and encouragement.

PETER: Speaking for myself, t’is always a pleasure.

RESPONDENT: I have made some progress in some areas ... (although as yet I have had no PCE during this period). The progress I have had is slow ... but fairly steady and undeniable. I will describe this progress in two areas: externally (sensory awareness of my outer environment) ... and internal (awareness and exploration into thoughts-feelings ... basically anything that seems to stand in the way of being happy and harmless right now):

PETER: Something Richard said that I found useful was to practice bringing my visual awareness to the very front of the eyeballs. I found this is the best ‘I’ can do to mimic ‘self’-less seeing – there is less of the feeling of ‘me’ looking through the eyes and more of the feeling of the eyes seeing. In this way you also avoid the risk of becoming ‘the observer’ watching ‘the observed’, but more closely mimic what you actually are – the universe sensately experiencing itself as a thinking and reflective corporeal human being.

Whilst sight tends to be the most dominant of the physical senses for most people, there is a wealth of sensate enjoyment to be had in the other senses. The business of sustaining oneself – eating food and drinking liquids – is a rich sensorial experience in itself as the tongue, in concert with the mouth and nose, is capable of detecting an extraordinary range of distinct tastes and flavours.

The physical world we humans live in is often replete with an extraordinary variety of sounds we hear set against the background of the ever-present stillness. As such, an increasing auditory awareness is accompanied by an increasing awareness of the vast milieu of stillness that exemplifies this physical universe.

The human body’s external skin is the largest of our sensorial receptors, capable of detecting a range of sensate experience, be it warmth or cold, hardness and softness, wetness or dryness, roughness or smoothness and so on. The human body also ‘swims’ in air rather as marine animals swim in water, which means that one’s skin is always receptive to the movement, temperature and humidity of the very air we breathe and move through. And with each breath we take, sensors in the nose are continuously monitoring the ingoing air for the smells, fragrances and odours given off by the physical objects around.

It does take stubborn intent and a good deal of effort to deliberately poke holes in the veil that ‘I’ as a psychological and psychic identity invariably impose over the actual world – to free one’s sensual awareness such that one can begin to experience that the actual world is indeed a pure and perfect bountiful paradise.

RESPONDENT: I’ve been having a lot of success in dealing with any emotions that come along, but when no emotions are present and I’m very much enjoying this moment of being alive, I’m still very conscious of my sense of self (identity) and my instinctual sex drive.

PETER: In the first phase of the actualism method – when I was still continuously aware of being a socially-ensnared and instinctually-driven being – I was constantly motivated to be very best ‘I’ could be, to be virtually happy and harmless, i.e. virtually free of malice and sorrow. With this in mind, I continually prodded myself to never settle for second best – to always make the effort to up the ante from feeling good about being here right now, to feeling really good about being here right now, to feeling excellent about being here right now. What this upping the ante did was serve to expose whatever it was that was preventing me from being virtually happy and harmless – those that remained lurking beneath the surface whenever ‘I’ settled for remaining within ‘my’ comfort zone.

RESPONDENT: OK so if I read you correctly there are not particular categories of insight which need to be explained before they can be discovered … I suppose this is what I am concerned about.

PETER: When I first came across actualism it took me a good deal of time and effort to come to an intellectual understanding of what was on offer. Only when I gave up holding on to my spiritual identity was I able to fully jump into the process of actualism and only after getting a handle on using the method did I start to have experiential understandings of my psyche in action which in turn can that produce life-changing insights.

In my experience there are two aspects to the insights an actualist has on the path to becoming free of the human condition. The first aspect is an intellectual understanding of a particular issue – something that is relatively easy for those of us who are following Richard’s lead because he has written so much about the human condition and how to become free of it. Having an intellectual understanding is a precursor to the most important part of understanding, experiential understanding.

Once I made the decision to become an actualist, I threw myself into increasing my intellectual understanding which meant reading and listening to what Richard has to say on a particular matter and then doing my own thinking and contemplating on the matter. I also found putting my thoughts down into written words was a great aid to clear thinking. I developed the habit of writing down my own understandings in note form as I was contemplating and I also wrote a personal journal and entered into correspondence with other people about actualism.

My experiential understandings came solely as a result of asking myself, each moment again, ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and becoming aware of exactly what it is that is preventing me from being blithe and benign in this moment. The answers that came from the running the question gave me experiential understandings about the human condition in general and about the devious nature of my social identity and the stygian depths of my instinctual identity in particular.

Whenever I experience my psyche in operation as-it-is-happening, it is as if a light is turned on and all of a sudden I can clearly see a facet of my social persona in action or my instinctual passions in operation as they are happening. This clear-eyed awareness has the potential to produce an insight of such intensity that it is life changing – and my sincere intent to become free of the human condition in toto means I can never go back to being the same as I was before.

So, intellectual understanding always comes first – as in ‘Ah, yes, that makes sense’. If you don’t have an intellectual understanding of the over-arching nature of the human condition, then you will have no idea what you are looking for when you ask yourself ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

Then, provided one makes the decision to devote one’s life to becoming happy and harmless, one moves on to stage two: logging up on-the-job, real-time, experiential understandings of your own psyche in action that can then lead to insights that are both life-changing and identity demolishing.

The most difficult thing to grasp about the actualism method is it’s utter simplicity – and I don’t say that lightly.

RESPONDENT: I have spent the last decade seeking happiness in one form or another, yet it was right here in front of my nose, and I could not see it.

PETER: Yeah. I spent seventeen years trawling the materialistic world seeking happiness and found the whole search for happiness via security, money, status, fame and power decidedly weird. I then spent another seventeen years in the spiritual world and eventually found the whole search for spiritual security, status, fame and power even weirder. Coming across the third alternative was indeed serendipitous.

RESPONDENT: Will particular insights relating to identity, sexual desires, etc prove as elusive as mastering the emotions...

PETER: Maybe it is just your choice of words, but I wouldn’t describe the actualism method as ‘mastering the emotions’ as this could give the impression that actualism is about suppressing or controlling one’s emotions, which it is not. As you know, in actualism one becomes aware of any feelings, emotions and passions as and when they are happening with the aim of minimizing both the invidious and aggrandizing emotions so as to be able to foster one’s felicitous feelings.

My experience was that once I threw myself totally into the process, insights did not prove elusive, rather they came in direct proportion to the intensity and focus of my investigations.

*

RESPONDENT: Although I had one PCE proper, most of the time I seem to be triggering near PCEs where my identity seems not to want to budge and the instinctual passions are waiting in the wings.

PETER: As I have said before on this list, I personally do not favour using the term near PCE as one is either having a PCE or not – a miss is as good as a mile. I much prefer the term ‘excellence experience’ for those times when I am feeling really excellent about being here.

RESPONDENT: OK. I’m still getting the hang of the various states I’m experiencing and how to describe them.

PETER: And the only reason I make such precise distinctions myself is so I can be scrupulously honest with myself about how I am experiencing this moment of being alive.

*

RESPONDENT: What I’m wondering is if there are any underpinnings of these two particular things which can be exposed in some way ... are there beliefs I’m not aware of yet, or some other thing to work on that I have missed?

PETER: As an actualist, if you have got the hang of feeling good for most of the time, then raise the stakes to wanting to feel excellent all of the time. This simple act is enough in itself to allow whatever impediments remain to your being virtually happy and harmless to emerge in the day-to-day, everyday business of being alive.

RESPONDENT: Yes I have been approaching this point lately, getting used to feeling good most of the time, and no longer being satisfied with it … now wanting to take it to the next level.

PETER: I found that I had to raise the stakes myself, despite my own inertia not to do so and despite the fact that I was obviously heading off in a direction that no-one else was heading or was interested in heading.

RESPONDENT: All of these experiences were triggered by pulling out the rug from under a particular belief or set of beliefs, and when I get to that near PCE state with identity and sex drive intact, it’s troubling being so conscious of their presence in my mind, but not knowing how to investigate them in such a way as to provide the kind of whoosh of results that investigating emotions can achieve.

PETER: I can relate to the ‘whoosh of results’ that you talk about – I had many realizations in the early days of my investigations that were both utterly thrilling and fundamentally life-changing. I did however get to a stage when the work involved in actualism produced what seemed to be less dramatic results … but then I noticed, and appreciated, the less drama-filled, more down-to-earth, consequences of setting my sights on being happy and harmless.

RESPONDENT: This is true. Difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced it, though :)

PETER: The squeaky clean thing about actualism is that you can’t explain it to anyone who isn’t interested in becoming actually free of malice and sorrow.

*

PETER: Often after doing some work or meeting some people, I would suddenly become aware of the fact that I had not got upset about something that I would have normally got upset about or I had not taken offence about something I would have normally taken offence about. In other words, I could see that the process of actualism was working in that I was not only feeling happier about being here but that I was actually becoming more sensitive to, and caring of, all of my fellow human beings.

RESPONDENT: I have been finding this in the last fortnight or so ... being less selfish than previously, I seem to have a more genuine interest in the well being of others, while being unattached from the results of any action I may render for their sake.

PETER: I remember thinking early on when I started to become fascinated with how I was experiencing this moment of being alive that I had become completely ‘self’-obsessed and I started to feel I was being selfish by doing so. Then it became apparent that by becoming ‘self’-obsessed I was also becoming aware of the extent of my invidious feelings towards others – be it annoyance, blame, chauvinism, aloofness, contempt, envy, competitiveness, haughtiness, or whatever. By assiduously weeding these feelings out of my interactions with other people, I came to more and more recognize other people as fellow human beings … and genuine care and sincere consideration emerged.

*

PETER: The other check I ran upon myself to confirm my progress as to whether I was becoming more unconditionally happy and unreservedly harmless was to conduct a review of the events of the day before I went to sleep at night time. Had I had an excellent day? If not, how long did I wallow in my unhappiness or how long did I hold on to my grievances before I got back on the happy and harmless track again?

RESPONDENT: This is a good idea. Thank you, I will give it a go :)

PETER: You have to have some way of measuring your own progress and only you can do that because only you can chart the down-to-earth changes that the actualism method is producing.

*

PETER: As you are probably discovering, it is impossible to investigate the source of one’s misery or the source of one’s annoyances whist one is firmly in the grip of these feelings for ‘I’ am these feelings in these times – there is no separation or distance possible when ‘I’ am in the grip of either the invidious passions or the beguiling passions. However, as soon as ‘I’ get back to feeling good or feeling excellent – and note that these are felicitous feelings we are talking about – it is then possible to apply some clear thinking in order to find out what triggered me feeling melancholic, aggrieved, vindictive, all-powerful, all-wise and so on.

Once you have firmly set your course to devote your life to becoming happy and harmless, nothing can go ‘wrong’ as it were. The very fact that you are vitally interested in being alive in this world as-it-is with people as-they-are presents you with all the opportunities to investigate whatever it is you need to eliminate whatever stands in the way of achieving your goal. And, as you have probably already twigged, it is never a ‘what’ that prevents you from being free of malice and sorrow, it is always a ‘who’ – and further, that it is never a ‘somebody else’ who is preventing me from being free, it is always ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: I think I understand ... because of the very nature of actualism (facts instead of beliefs, refusing to ignore one’s problems any longer, etc) the insights will probably continue as long as the sincere investigation does … well until ‘I’ go ‘pop’ :)

PETER: My experience is that they continued apace until I became virtually happy and virtually harmless for 99% of the time, until ‘I’ cleaned myself up as much as ‘I’ possibly could. And only you will know when that happens.

*

PETER: And from your second post on the same thread –

[Respondent]: ‘Will particular insights relating to identity, sexual desires, etc prove as elusive as mastering the emotions...’ [endquote].

RESPONDENT: Since asking this it has become quite obvious what the nature of those two desires is, thanks to your advice. That was definitely the pointer I needed. I think if I hadn’t had that to focus on when examining the nature of desire, it might never have become obvious. Ironically this is one of the things about actualism which is so hard to grasp without putting it in practice … you read it so many times but it doesn’t mean anything just reading it … yet later, in practice, it’s seen as being such a crucial difference to whether one finds success.

That’s also why it’s so hard to communicate the essence of actualism … it must be experienced to be fully understood.

At least, this is how it seems to me.

PETER: Yep. An intellectual-only understanding is a limp squid by itself. Unless you try something out you will never know if it works, how it works and why it works. Similarly, unless a theory is empirically proven to work in practice it remains a hoped-for supposition, unless one’s own beliefs are experientially understood to be nothing more than beliefs they will continue to hold one in their vice-like grip and unless an insight produces a tangible change in one’s life it is merely a ‘self’-indulgent wank.

Contrary to popular belief, Existence does not provide. Unless ‘I’ get of my bum and do something, nothing will happen … and nothing will change.

Nice to chat about such matters.

RESPONDENT: I’ve been having a lot of success in dealing with any emotions that come along, but when no emotions are present and I’m very much enjoying this moment of being alive, I’m still very conscious of my sense of self (identity) and my instinctual sex drive.

PETER: In the first phase of actualism – when I was still continuously aware of being a socially-ensnared and instinctually-driven being – I was constantly motivated to be very best ‘I’ could be, to be virtually happy and harmless, i.e. virtually free of malice and sorrow. With this in mind, I continually prodded myself to never settle for second best – to always make the effort to up the ante from feeling good about being here right now, to feeling really good about being here right now, to feeling excellent about being here right now. What this upping the ante did was serve to expose whatever it was that was preventing me from being virtually happy and harmless – those that remained lurking beneath the surface whenever ‘I’ settled for remaining within ‘my’ comfort zone.

RESPONDENT: I am happy to report some success using this method of continual prodding, even when already feeling good ... investigating, investigating, investigating and finding that there are still things there, even if only the strong sense of the identity, then starting to contemplate what my identity is.

Two days ago this caused a PCE which lasted a good two hours, and I was able to bring it back when I felt my sense of self returning by further contemplating ... in particular on that occasion I was struck by the fact that my work colleagues in their interactions with me, have a concept of who they think I am, when in fact I am just this body. With my identity present I can recognise the idea intellectually but it does not strike me like it did during the PCE.

A most enjoyable experience, rather eye opening, and best of all it made it clear that any time I’m not in a PCE there’s something to work on, and the direction in which I need to head is more obvious now.

PETER: Yes. Whenever you notice that you are not feeling happy about being here in the world as-it-is, or whenever you notice you are feeling annoyed by people as-they-are, then there is work to do. Label the feeling as precisely as you can, feel the feeling and get back to feeling good as quickly as you can. Then – after the emotional storm has passed – make your investigations as to what triggered your feeling sad or feeling annoyed, why the feeling was triggered, and what you need to do to change if you are to prevent such invidious feelings from being triggered in similar situations. I found it useless to try and make any sense of what is going on whilst in the grip of a feeling or emotion because sense is nowhere to found whilst in the grip of passion.

However when you notice you are feeling good there is equally vital work to be done and that is to crank up your felicitous feelings – your joie de vie if you like – about being here in this moment of time in the cornucopia that his verdant planet actually is.

Whilst both of these aspects of the work of an actualist are of equal importance, it is imperative that one puts the cart before the horse – the commitment to being happy and harmless means that one is then committed to investigating and eliminating anything that stands in the way of fulfilling that commitment. (...)

*

RESPONDENT: All of these experiences were triggered by pulling out the rug from under a particular belief or set of beliefs, and when I get to that near PCE state with identity and sex drive intact, it’s troubling being so conscious of their presence in my mind, but not knowing how to investigate them in such a way as to provide the kind of whoosh of results that investigating emotions can achieve.

PETER: I can relate to the ‘whoosh of results’ that you talk about – I had many realizations in the early days of my investigations that were both utterly thrilling and fundamentally life-changing. I did however get to a stage when the work involved in actualism produced what seemed to be less dramatic results … but then I noticed, and appreciated, the less drama-filled, more down-to-earth, consequences of setting my sights on being happy and harmless.

RESPONDENT: This is true. Difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced it, though :)

PETER: The squeaky clean thing about actualism is that you can’t explain it to anyone who isn’t interested in becoming actually free of malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: Or even explain it to someone who isn’t aware of malice and sorrow in their lives – which is probably the majority. I had to really become aware of it before I could see the need to do something about it.

PETER: Actualism will have no appeal whatsoever to those who are in denial that they have malicious or sorrowful feelings. One has to freely admit that one has a problem, or is a part of the problem, before one is ready and willing to do something about it.

I wrote specifically about an incident where I lost my cool and became angry in my spiritual years. It was one of the many events in my life that continually spurred me on to find a way of actually ridding myself of anger. And two years after that my search paid off – I found actualism.

Good, hey.

RESPONDENT: I would be fascinated to hear what types of practices you do beyond HAIETMOBA, what types of progress you make, if any.

PETER: The whole point of asking oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ was to overcome my inherent lack of attention as to how I am experiencing this very moment, the only moment I have ever been able to experience being alive, the only moment I can ever experience being alive, and the only moment I will ever experience being alive.

By remembering to ask myself the question, I was for the first time in my life starting to focus my attention on being here and subsequently upon how I am feeling about being here, right now. I recently related it as narrowing the focus of my attention down – firstly to this, my only life, by progressively eliminating any of the spiritual fairy tales of a ‘life’ after death and then to this very moment, the only moment I can actually experience being alive … all by the utterly simple process of remembering to be aware of how I am experiencing this moment.

It is a struggle at first as I, like everybody else, had a lifetime’s ingrained habit to overcome – the habit of wallowing in past memories, daydreaming, tripping off into fantasy worlds, settling for being comfortably numb, indulging in philosophical discussions or concocting future scenarios and then vicariously living them out in my own imagination. But once I got the gist of becoming aware of what was happening in this moment and how I was feeling about what was happening … or not happening if that was the case … in this moment, I soon came to the stage where this awareness became so automatic that I could not turn it off and then I could no longer escape from the fact that this is the only moment that I can experience being alive.

So to answer your question, there is nothing ‘beyond HAIETMOBA’ – bringing one’s attention to how one is experiencing this moment of being alive – focusing one’s attentiveness on this moment of being alive is both the means and the end to an actual freedom from the human condition of malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: I suppose I am very much reminded of Richard’s journal entry (excuse the paraphrase) that it was after six weeks of experientially considering ‘what am I in relation to other people?’ that he achieved actual freedom – rather than HAIETMOBA itself.

PETER: If you re-read the passage in question you will find that the reason Richard asked what turned out to be a seminal question (for him) was that Richard, the identity was apparently ‘putting out’ some – dare I say it – vibes to another person such that the other person wanted to become his disciple. It’s not that ‘he’ asked himself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ – it’s that ‘he’ was constantly aware of how ‘he’ was experiencing this moment … so much so that this very awareness ultimately led to ‘his’ demise.

RESPONDENT: Are you fully committed to achieving an actual freedom?

PETER: Of course … I was fully committed the moment I fully devoted my life to becoming happy and harmless.

At the start of the process of actualism the means to becoming free from the human condition is to be as happy and as harmless as one can be in this moment and the end goal is to become actually free form the human condition.

I never separated one from the other at the start because for me they were inseparable.

RESPONDENT: I have not fully committed to achieving an actual freedom yet. But I have fully committed to achieving a virtual freedom at least.

PETER: Is not a full commitment to a partial success by definition only a partial commitment to total success, and if this is the case surely the best outcome would only be partial success? Whilst partial success is not be sneezed at in that you do get to live a life that is way, way beyond normal human expectations anyway, I personally set my sights higher than that right at the start.

RESPONDENT: Many people have pointed out the fact that no one but Richard has achieved an actual freedom yet – but I think they fail to realise (1) that virtual freedom must be pretty damn pleasant anyway and (2) fully committing to an actual freedom means going beyond a lot of fear, no doubt moments of raw unadulterated fear but also a subtle lingering fear.

PETER: If I had taken heed of the naysayers and had settled for forever remaining an instinctual ‘being’, I would never had had the gall to set off down the path to becoming actually free of the human condition which, in hindsight, means I would never have become virtually free.

RESPONDENT: I expect there could be a lingering hesitation for anyone who achieves a virtual freedom. I mean let’s face it, a virtual freedom is probably like having one’s cake and eating it too... a position usually considered too good to be true.

PETER: Indeed. But what I have more and more discovered is that, whilst prior to becoming an actualist ‘I’ was constantly anywhere but here and anywhen but now, I now find that the ongoing attentiveness I found so hard to get going at first has now becomes so effortlessly automatic that there is no escaping the fact that this is the only moment I can experience. This has lately led to glimpses of what I call the ‘end’ joke – that I have unwittingly been a player in a game, a very real game and an instinctually vicious game, but a game nevertheless and that only by coming to my senses can I be free of ‘being’.

As you would know, having glimpses and having realizations is one thing, actualizing them is another.