|
Richard’s Correspondence On The Actual Freedom Mailing List with Correspondent No. 35
RESPONDENT: What to say? RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Mailing List ... you could, of course, always say something about what is on offer on The Actual Freedom Web Site. RESPONDENT: Richard, and all you: I’m diving in this debate as an inopportune child in a swimming pool! RICHARD: What ‘debate’ are you referring to? This Mailing List is set-up to share experience and understanding and elucidate just what is entailed in becoming free of the human condition so as to usher in peace on earth sooner rather than later. RESPONDENT: I’ve preferred not to read any previous letters, I’m fed up with reading about human felicity and well-being. RICHARD: Okay ... as I am not fed-up with writing about ‘human felicity and well-being’ you may very well find yourself having to delete my e-mails. Have you at least read the welcome message that comes with your subscription? RESPONDENT: Even that, I’m not just curious about debating with you, or not debating if you prefer. RICHARD: Seeing that you have mentioned my preference I will take this opportunity to make it clear that I prefer discussion over argumentation any day of the week. RESPONDENT: I pre-sense a slight quality in all you. Difficult to explain. RICHARD: Ahh ... so I take it that you have read a least something of what is on offer on The Actual Freedom Web Site. Unless you are speaking of some psychic ‘pre-sense’ of course (and such prescience is notoriously unreliable). RESPONDENT: I’m in a precious situation, I’m throwing my faith in any kind of guide, speaker, man or woman of knowledge. RICHARD: Good ... I always advise throwing out faith, trust, hope and belief. RESPONDENT: Something in me is extremely inclined to devote me to this kind of people, it’s a good feeling, but I doubt if this devotion is squashing me. I’m uncomfortable with this doubt, and want to unstick from it, to resolve it, to let it behind. But as it doesn’t result at all, I’m beginning to appreciate this discomfort, this adherent doubt. RICHARD: What I devoted myself to all those years ago was to becoming free of the human condition – and not to a person or persons – which left me free of doubt about the advisability of my intent. RESPONDENT: Astonished by the guru ranking via internet, all around the world, I feel as my soul was falling at my feet, when I read about enlightened people, that refer strange episodes of mysterious energies, sensations, immense states, and so and so. RICHARD: I particularly appreciate all the ‘guru ranking’ and so on, which is available thanks to the internet, as they thus help to expose, for all to see, just how worthless spiritual enlightenment really is. RESPONDENT: I really enjoy at a point this exhibition, extremely similar to a market show. But the case is that I feel shocked by envy, rage, antagonism, self-invalidation and insecurity. RICHARD: Okay ... but if you can thus see, by their actions, that the gurus do not have a viable solution to all the ills of humankind then all your feelings of ‘shock, envy, rage, antagonism, self-invalidation and insecurity’ will not have been in vain. RESPONDENT: If what they say is real, simply I don’t be worthwhile, even worse, I’m a kind of obstinate stupid, insane, mediocre. I’m a looser, I feel exactly the same, as when I compare me with no matter what figure of success, of fame, that correspond with a model that all we hope to be and catch. RICHARD: How about ceasing to look for or to follow a role model and find out for yourself just what is going on in regards your own lack of peace-on-earth? For starters: how about examining your feelings of ‘shock, envy, rage, antagonism, self-invalidation and insecurity’ to see what they are made up of? RESPONDENT: I’ll never have these experiences, even I try, I persist, I could pretend I have them. RICHARD: Hmm ... ‘never’ is such a final word: as you are a human being then ‘these experiences’ are indeed possible for you. The question would be: given the behaviour of those that tout spiritual enlightenment are their experiences worthwhile pursuing? RESPONDENT: It’s a very contradictory phenomenon to me, stressing, collapsing. But I’m arriving to accept this insanity, and at a point enjoying it, joking with it. What I’m little discovering is that all matters about my tension and anguish is associated with thought activity. RICHARD: Thought may very well be triggering off your feelings of ‘tension and anguish’ ... have you ever considered that if there be no feelings, such as ‘tension and anguish’ , in situ in the first place then you can think whatever you like without any ill effects? For just one example: if the feeling of spite is extirpated one will not be capable of thinking spiteful thoughts ever again. RESPONDENT: I’m here, beginning to just enjoy this point, it’s a very insecure and mobile point. From one side I deny all teachers, that represent our hope of sublime experiences, of sublime no matter what. They are merely dragged by intermediaries, exactly as stars of the singing. RICHARD: Are you sure that all the gurus are really being dragged by intermediaries ... or is there something about spiritual enlightenment itself that gives rise to such actions? RESPONDENT: From another side I pre-sense that it’s not so simple to deny them, at some degree of innocence I’m still confident of them, otherwise, something in them conserve a freshness, a promise. RICHARD: Is it really a ‘degree of innocence’ ... or is it a degree of ignorance? Innocence cannot exist whilst the human condition persists. RESPONDENT: Finally, and substantially I’m doubting about myself, because all my criterions, all my reactions and adherences comes from the same source, an activity of thinking. RICHARD: Are you prepared to dig a little deeper than merely questioning thinking? What about the affective feelings – the emotions and the passions – do you ever examine them? I say this because emotions and passions exist prior to thought. RESPONDENT: And thinking it’s not conviable at all, its nature itself is to be false, mutable, contradictory. RICHARD: What my experience shows is that where there are no affective feelings in place then thinking is a delightful episodic event which produces no ill effects whatsoever. RESPONDENT: U.G. seems to me a summit of contradiction, in principle for me is just another stars, capricious, hard, we expect this in a star. We want a wide spectrum of stars, of politics, of poets, of no matter what, this creates the sensation that they are different, that they stimulate us. In other hand, I’m happy that U.G. call enlightened people bastards. Maybe U.G. himself is another bastard! RICHARD: No, he is simply another enlightened being, in a long line of enlightened beings, but with a condemnatory slant on the subject of other enlightened beings. RESPONDENT: Maybe me, you. RICHARD: You can include me out of your self-castigation ... I am not a ‘bastard’ by any definition. RESPONDENT: But I found this elimination light, I feel a little better, as if the sun come out from the clouds, very normally. RICHARD: I have no notion of what you are talking about here. RESPONDENT: Writing you is a very challenging episode in my inner play and exploration. You say there is something better than enlightenment? RICHARD: I do indeed ... I call it an actual freedom because it is located here in this actual world and not in some metaphysical world. One of its advantages is that it enables peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: This must be incredible. RICHARD: Aye ... incredible, unbelievable, unimaginable and inconceivable to a person still stuck in the human condition (it has to be lived to be known). RESPONDENT: Don’t take care about what I say, I’m just moving the waters. Because more I pretend to explain me, my road, my attitudes, more I realise that it’s absolutely, substantially impossible. RICHARD: Oh ... you are doing just fine so far. RESPONDENT: How to describe a single sensation? RICHARD: By inviting the other to experience the same sensation and then comparing notes? RESPONDENT: My dealing with language is esteril, no one can answer me, no one can explain himself. RICHARD: Speaking personally I have no trouble in explaining myself. RESPONDENT: In all case we must accept that all we can say is frustrant, incomplete, erroneous, inexact, re-interpretative, and so and so. No matter if it’s you who say something, U.G., or no matter what person erudite or humble. RICHARD: Again you can include me out ... nothing I want to say turns out to be like what you describe here. RESPONDENT: The instrumentality of thought never clair up us. Maybe just in accepting this, a relaxation and communication can happens, that can be anticipated nor manipulated by the illusion that the thinking means something. RICHARD: This is the fourth time you have bagged thought and/or thinking ... whereas thought is a marvellous tool, which sets the human animal apart from the other animals, and which is an invaluable aid in unravelling the mess that is the human condition and conveying one’s findings to one’s fellow human beings. No other animal can do this. RESPONDENT: I really don’t know more what I’m saying, nor to who, nor for what, this is at less curious. RICHARD: Well the main thing I am getting about what you are saying is that thought and/or thinking is the problem. RESPONDENT: I’m in this point, it’s not agreeable, it’s not disagreeable, I’m mad? RICHARD: Probably not ... it is not uncommon for spiritual seekers to become somewhat screwed-up. RESPONDENT: What do you say? RICHARD: My suggestion is to start examining the affective feelings – the emotions and the passions – each moment again as they come up of their own accord in your day-to-day life ... and to cease bagging thought and/or thinking. RESPONDENT: Maybe you just want to throw me. RICHARD: I would rather direct you to the following link. It is safe to read ... there is no rave about ‘human felicity and well-being’ on that page. RESPONDENT: Expecting your counter-part for all this foolishness, and in the foolishness of expecting. RICHARD: You will get no foolishness from me ... I am entirely sincere.
RESPONDENT: Richard, I’m considering seriously what you say about emotions (...) I’m observing very primitive emotions I was not so aware, a corporal sentiment, very holding, of imminence of death, of being attacked, of being led alone in a strange world, fears and shaking feelings of a very particular nature, a kind of more infantine emotions of insecurity, of weakness, of abandon and so. I can’t define them too much exactly for the moment, I’ll keep on observing. What I observe is that they are very corporal, very immediate, rapid and total, the whole body is shaken as in its roots, in the inside of bones, veins, articulations, skull, and so, they are not superficial emotions, more or less vaporous or soft. Also I observe that from these emotions, a curious sensation arises in all the body and brain, it’s a sensation that expands, extends a kind of calm, warm, well-being, lightening, comfort. I begin to appreciate that this holding, primitive, immediate, emotions, fears of do not survive, search of protection, of reassurance, can easily, gently reconvert themselves in a crescent state of well-being in the body, in some way similar to an arising drunkenness. With this general well-being also is an inherent impression of knowledge, of wisdom, of a consciousness expanded, powerful, clear, calmed. All the whole sensation of expansion, and the expansion of my consciousness, with a sense of being very myself, my real and own me, finding finally myself, strongly in me, led alone with me, holding myself, the me of myself that I feel denied. I’ve experience a bit enough before, momentarily a crescendo of the impression of being in touch with my very me, in rest with me, accepting, glorifying me, momentarily an alteration of my perceptivity, an impression of a brain expanding, being transparent, clarifying, calming, understanding, a certain exaltation of affectivity, of expressiveness, as when one is drunk, play, or is in the intimacy. I’ve in part desired this expansion and security, this glorifying, this encounter, and in part abandoned this expansion passed a little time. First this expansion usually consumes itself in a court time, secondly, I’ve noticed an obvious effort in the ground of the expansion to maintain it, to construct it. This effort seemed to me subtly exhausting, obscure and doubtful. As I was alert about the possible obscurity of these expansions, I’ve never searched to repeat them voluntarily or systematically, I could have done it, because I’ve noticed some tricks and resources to induce them, mainly associated with meditation practices. Also I’ve avoided this kind of affective expansion, where I felt obligated and pushed to hug everyone in the world as an intimate. Passed this moments of affectation, I’ve always felt shame, equally as a drunk feels shame of his uncontrolled acts the night before. Even this affective expansion was a goal for me, because I supposed that I had to be loving and wonderful, and this expansion itself felt in some way well, in opposition with the normal constriction of my affects and expression, immediately, passed the euphoria, I suddenly felt shame, a feeling of retraction. And also, paradoxically this retraction creates a conflict in me, because I was continuing to suppose I had to be indiscriminately loving, expressive. Passed some time, I’ve definitively avoided this search and urge of demonstrating affects, as even repulsive. In these affective expansions, also was this touch with what I realised as my very intimate me. This I liked maybe the most, because I felt me, recovering me, entering in me, as otherwise I felt always not being my real me, being constricted. This impression of being in touch with me, was rooted, established by a simultaneous general sensation in and all around the body, of a sort of light weight, that seems extraordinarily saturated, secure, autonomous and absolute, this absoluteness enhancing also an impression of absolutising my understanding. Something similar I’ve experienced in orgasm, but in this case the experiences were of two type, of affirming, or of annihilation, with feelings of disaster, going out, very distantly. Curiously, because surely of my self-castigation, the annihilation experiences tend to keep on hardly, and ... Now, as I re-elaborate my understanding of these experiences, listening to your own elaboration about altered states of consciousness, and considering the presence of emotions, I begin to recognize more clearly, that in these experiences is the ground of primary emotions that operates. These primary fears and needs give us a definitive and powerful sense of being ourselves, I’m attacked, I’m in need. Unconsciously, unnoticed, depending in some junctures, mainly choking or overpowering, these emotions gently transform in an opposite apparent calm and expansion, with a sense of me completely sure and complete. For this expansion the world, the people on it, must be left aside, ignored, declined, killed. This creates an opportunity for the construction of an inner calm, a calm in nowhere, killing the world I attain to affirm me, in a glorification. Although I was so attached to this incipient glorified me, I’m realising it is purely an image reproduced and exalted, that I catch and reaffirm as if I were reaffirming me actually. I thought I can’t reaffirm me actually, in an actual body and in an actual world, so I aspire to reaffirm me innerly, far behind letting the world. I see more clearly, in your terms, this expansion experiences as a dissociation. And what impress me the most is the extremely corporal nature of this process, because there are these primitive and extra-rooted in the body emotions, that are sliding from the world. This immediate and suffocating emotiveness gifts an immediate and irrevocable feeling of self-ness, that can be glorified, or at less dignified. Yes, I’m completely alone and well in a perfect bubble, I am well, all the rest must be denied, don’t interest me anymore … . All this is a game of emotions, that we can’t deal better in their chocking and urging nature. I observe also in me that the norm about my emotions is to pretend they are not here, but these emotions condition me completely, instant by instant. They affect the way I relation myself, the way I perceive, the way I think. They are there all time, scraping, bothering, making interpretations of all that it’s given. Even if I’m habituated, constructed for eluding this mordent sentiments, or for time to time discharging them, they continue to be a swarm, a constant incommodity and conditioning. I realise this emotional ground more clearly. I’m pushed to observe it, how it really feels, and eventually to see if there is a different operation of these emotions. I’m very curious and expectant to observe this movement of emotions in my own observation, or awareness as you use. What will happens? Can maybe emotions calm without a distancing from the world? The temptation, the known road is always to search apparent, momentary calm, refuge, in the distance. Can I get affirmation in the real, tangible world? Or better, can I feel no insecure in the real world, so that, the unnecessary weight of a strong me will be seen as illusory? In confidence I really don’t have to be, to protect and reinforce me, in confidence the less I am, the more can the joyous world be. RICHARD: You talk about the primitive emotions – which are indeed ‘not superficial emotions’ – and it is pertinent to realise that all sentient beings are born with certain basic passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) which are blind nature’s way of ensuring survival at a very elemental level ... they are sometimes known as the survival passions. These survival passions are not the creation of thought, although thought can trigger them off, nor are they the creation of the senses, although sense impressions can set them going, as they are innate or pre-existing passions. You also talked of touching upon your very intimate ‘me’ ... and I appreciate that you were able to see that a consciousness expanded and glorified – in what you describe as ‘a certain exaltation of affectivity’ – requires and/or results in a disassociation from the world of people, things and events. You ask: ‘Can maybe emotions calm without a distancing from the world?’ I always found that coming to one’s senses – both literally and metaphorically – and being just here in physical space right now in physical time as this flesh and blood body does the trick. I can put it this way: what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these eyes seeing, these ears hearing, this tongue tasting, this skin touching and this nose smelling – and no separative identity (no ‘I’/‘me’) means no separation – whereas ‘I’/‘me’, a psychological/psychic entity, am inside the body busily creating an inner world and an outer world and looking out through ‘my’ eyes upon ‘my’ outer world as if looking out through a window, listening to ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ tongue, touching ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ skin and smelling ‘my’ outer world through ‘my’ nose ... plus adding all kinds of emotional/psychological baggage to what is otherwise the bare sensory experience of the flesh and blood body. This identity (‘I’/‘me’) is forever cut-off from the actual ... from the world as-it-is. RESPONDENT: P.S.: A friend of mine it’s very interested in your comments about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Have you something written about it, or could you send me some comments? Thank you. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet:
Amongst other things he is saying that he is not the body ... that he is the limitless being. RESPONDENT: Do you Know Jim Leonard? He has promoted a method to enjoying all in life, he called it Vivation. It’s developed from the Rebirthing technique, but it’s completely opposite in essence. I insist you in exploring what Jim and Vivation proposes, because I think he is very near in his approach to yours. He emphasizes emotional dealing, as associated with spontaneous and mobile breathing. He promotes experiencing actually how ‘negative’ emotions can be ‘integrated’, in his terms, what means a transformation in ‘positive’ ones, for instance, anger integrates in determination, fear in alert, sorrow in gratefulness. I think you can study more carefully his writings, maybe in the web. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which speaks for itself:
RESPONDENT: Another approach you could maybe explore, for its possible similitude with actualism in a practice called Katsugen-undo, that means in Japanese regenerative movement. It consists in letting the involuntary system of the body operate freely. In this practice, there is a main insistence in the primitive brain, that control involuntary reflects and movements. By the practice, all the conditioning about the more primitive responses of the body dissolves, and the body recovers innocent spontaneity, and sensitivity. In this process also breathing arises spontaneously, and emotions, that also normalises. Both Katsugen-undo and Vivation process, can and should also be applied in daily life. The main introductor of Katsugen was Ichio Tsuda. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which also speaks for itself:
RESPONDENT: By the end, do you know about Douglas Harding? Explore also about him, he explains a path he calls the headless way. He, as you, states the inexistence of a perceptor, only the world is perceived in all its magnificence and extreme brightness. If you have the time to investigate on him, you will see by your own. RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which clearly indicates, amongst other names, that it is the enlightened state he is talking about:
RESPONDENT: It’s very possible that you have yet explored about these people, in this case, please say me what do you think about them, if it is convenient. Thanks. RICHARD: They are all spiritual people.
RESPONDENT: How your descriptions about your experience of freedom affects this freedom itself? RICHARD: An actual freedom from the human condition is not at all affected by any descriptions of it. RESPONDENT: Maybe the description itself has gained such an emphasis that the experience itself also has being totally delayed? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: Maybe the repetition and the importance of the description produces you merely an illusion of reproducing this experience, that is no more happening with the purity of the beginning? RICHARD: No. RESPONDENT: An experience is something in movement, an illusion of experiencing is constant, it can bring a comparative sensation of being even better, but always inside of a frame of constancy. RICHARD: There is a vast stillness here.
RESPONDENT: Maybe your benevolence in trying to describe and transmit your experience, is paradoxically serving only to the other as a barrier of discovering by himself. RICHARD: No ... but as you arbitrarily dismiss somebody that has discovered for themselves after reading my descriptions as being ‘a cultist person’ it may have escaped your notice that there demonstrably is no such barrier (hence no paradox) after all.
RETURN TO THE ACTUAL FREEDOM MAILING LIST INDEX RETURN TO RICHARD’S CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) 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.
Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust:
1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
