Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Malice:

As a broad generalised categorisation, ‘malice’ (the desire to hurt another person; active ill will, spite or hatred; a deep *resentment*) is used here as a ‘catch-all’ word for what one does to others (*resentment*, anger, hatred, rage, sadism and so on through all the variations such as abhorrence; acerbity; acrimony; aggression; anger; animosity; antagonism; antipathy; aversion; bad blood; temper; bellicosity; belligerence; bile; bitchiness; bitterness; cantankerousness; cattiness; crabbiness; crossness; defamation; despisal; detestation; disgust; dislike; dissatisfaction; enmity; envy; evil; execration; grievance; grudge; grudgingness; hard feelings; harm; hate; hatred; hostility; ill feeling; ill will; ill-nature; ill-temper; inimicalness; irascibility; irritability; loathing; malevolence; malignance; malignity; militancy; moodiness; murder; opposition; peevishness; petulance; pique; querulousness; rancour; repulsion; repugnance; *resentment*; snideness; spite; spitefulness; spleen; spoiling; stifling; sullenness; testiness; touchiness; umbrage; unfriendliness; unkindness; vengefulness; venom; vindictiveness; warlikeness; wrath). [emphases added]. (Richard, Abditorium, Malice)

RESPONDENT: Something that has helped me recently was reading (list B, Feb., 2003, respondent #19) about going around approving and disapproving of the universe happening. That’s me! I have been disapproving of the universe happening! Not that I am now approving of it happening (I never did approve of it happening that I know of) but now it’s more neutral. Life is easier. It’s like I have a less adverse effect on people and things.

RICHARD: I was unable to find anything at the reference you provide ... but I did find this:

• [Richard]: ‘Back in 1980 ‘I’ looked at the stars one night and temporarily came to my senses: there are galaxies exploding/imploding (or whatever) all throughout the physical infinitude where an immeasurable quantity of matter is perpetually arranging and rearranging itself in endless varieties of form all over the boundless reaches of infinite space throughout the limitless extent of eternal time and ‘I’ – puny, pathetic ‘I’ in an ant-like-in-comparison and very vulnerable 6’2’’ flesh and blood body – disapprove of all this? That is, ‘I’ call all this a ‘sick joke’, or whatever depreciative assessment? And further: so what if ‘I’ were to do an about-face and graciously approve? What difference would that make to the universe?

Zilch.

Ergo: ‘I’, with all my abysmal opinions, theories, concepts, values, principles, judgements and so on, am not required at all ... ‘I’ am a supernumerary. ‘I’ am redundant; ‘I’ can retire; fold ‘my’ hand; pack in the game, die, dissolve, disappear, disintegrate, depart, vamoose, vanish – whatever – and life would manage quite well, thank you, without ‘me’ ... a whole lot better, in fact, as ‘I’ am holding up the works from functioning smoothly.

‘I’ am not needed ... ‘my’ services are no longer required. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 10, 25 May 2000)

What is at the bottom of all this disapproving business is a basic resentment at having to be here in the first place (as in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ for example) and that fundamental grievance gets taken out on the universe at large.

And for as long as ‘I’ am out to prove that life sucks (by being miserable and malicious) and that being here is the pits there is no way ‘I’ am going to be happy and harmless as to do so would be to betray ‘my’ most basic feeling about it all.

I kid you not – it was one of the first things ‘I’ realised all those years ago – yet there is a simple way to be done with such nonsense forever. Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘In 1980, ‘I’ , the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the world – and the universe itself – was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom’ of the world ‘I’ had inherited – the real world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so exquisite to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! (pages 240-41, ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997).

You will see that this is a far cry from being ‘more neutral’ about it all. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 30 September 2003)

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RESPONDENT: ... but thank you for pointing out why because, obviously, how can I be happy when my attitude is ‘I didn’t ask to be born.’? HA!

RICHARD: Indeed not ... that basic resentment, the fundamental grievance, will dog every best effort otherwise and render all endeavour useless.

RESPONDENT: On the AF site you have often taken the time to say the same thing in at least fifty different ways. Someday one of those ways may be (or trigger) the right words in my head (for AF to happen).

RICHARD: Or even a virtual freedom: someone once said, after reading maybe 60-70 pages of my journal, that Richard repeats himself a lot and stopped reading ... which occasioned me to recall someone else saying that they had read it eight times and were onto their ninth read ... and each time discovering layers of meaning (if only because of the repetition) overlooked in each previous read-through.

There is no prize for guessing who is now living in virtual peace and harmony and who is still quarrelling and bickering. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 5 October 2003)

RESPONDENT: Third thing: later in your post to No. 04 you seem to divide feelings into three categories : [Richard]: ‘If one minimises the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings (as explained above) and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on – in conjunction with sensuousness, then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness’. [endquote]. There are ‘good’ feelings, ‘bad’ feelings’ and ‘felicitous’ feelings? I am confused about this categorisation. How do you define which feelings are appropriate and which are good or bad?

RICHARD: I have no intention of providing either a limited or an exhaustive list ... there are literally hundreds of feeling-words listed in the dictionary. For example, last year someone asked, on another list, what ‘malice’ was ... and I spent five minutes in the Oxford’s thesaurus and provided what they could have produced themselves if they had any nous:

• [Respondent No. 00]: ‘What is malice?’
• [Richard]: ‘Malice is a catch-all word I have chosen to cover the full range of emotions and passions like those in this, by no means exhaustive, list that I plucked at random out of the thesaurus: abhorrence, acerbity, acrimony, aggression, anger, animosity, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bad blood, bad temper, bellicosity, belligerence, bile, bitchiness, bitterness, cantankerousness, cattiness, crabbiness, crossness, defamation, despisal, detestation, disgust, dislike, dissatisfaction, enmity, envy, evil, execration, grievance, grudge, grudgingness, hard feelings, harm, hate, hatred, hostility, ill feeling, ill will, ill-nature, ill-temper, ill-will, inimicalness, irascibility, irritability, loathing, malevolence, malignance, malignity, militancy, moodiness, murder, opposition, peevishness, petulance, pique, querulousness, rancour, repulsion, repugnance, *resentment*, snideness, spite, spitefulness, spleen, spoiling, stifling, sullenness, testiness, touchiness, umbrage, unfriendliness, unkindness, vengefulness, venom, vindictiveness, warlikeness, wrath and so on and so on’.

It is so much fun finding out for oneself ... is it not? Also, I am somewhat surprised that this is all new to you ... may I draw your attention to an exchange you and I had three or four posts ago? Viz.:

• [Respondent]: What you say makes sense to me. My sense of fascination is growing constantly. I am paying attention to this moment and as I do, the experience of the moment is enough in itself. There is no need for me to process the experience through a thinker or through a feeler.
• [Richard]: ‘Good. The essence of success in actualism – the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – is to fully acknowledge that one is ‘human’ and to imitate the actual as far as is humanly possible. Whilst the ultimate goal is to be actually here – now – for the twenty four hours of a day, the immediate goal is to feel good each moment again. Continuing success then leads to feeling happy each moment again ... and then up-levelling it to feeling perfect for twenty three hours fifty nine minutes (99%) of the day. Thus, although thought and feeling are operating, the ‘thinker’ and ‘feeler’ hardly get a look-in other than this seductive cooperation in their own extinction. Occasionally they rise up and demand recognition ... but the habitual self-gratifying orgies of self-piteous indulgence lose their attraction’. [endquote]. [emphasis added].

Methinks you will find that I have been very clear and up-front all along. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12b, 27 February 1999)

RESPONDENT: I have a bit of trouble summoning up delight (as Richard suggests), as it seems imaginary, as opposed to the release that comes with facing issues. That is still under consideration though.

RICHARD: The first sentence of above paragraph is specifically designed to get one out of ‘stuckness’ ... it is not intended as an on-going way of living life. It is a short, sharp shock of attention – a ‘kick-start’ in the jargon – to counteract the ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ resentment that caused the stuckness in the first place. Another ‘wake-up jab’ (which makes use of any remnant of pride) is to ask oneself: ‘I have two choices right now: being happy and harmless or being dull and degenerate ... which way do I sensibly choose to spend this never-to-be-repeated precious moment of living so that I can honestly call myself a mature adult?’

A happy and harmless person has a much better chance of precipitating a PCE ... which is the essential pre-requisite for an actual freedom (otherwise this is all theory). It goes without saying, surely, that a grumpy person locks themselves out of being here ... now.

For a full and comprehensive explication of what this succinct paragraph conveys you may care to access the article: ‘Attentiveness and Sensuousness and Apperceptiveness’ on my Web Page. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 3, 16 February 1999)

RESPONDENT: Just curious, have you read any books by E.M. Cioran?

RICHARD: No ... and the following quote (arguably quite representative of his contribution to the betterment of the lot of humankind) will demonstrate why not:

• ‘We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life. We are reluctant, of course, to treat birth as a scourge: Has it not been inculcated as the sovereign good – have we not been told that worst came at the end, not the outset of our lives? Yet evil, real evil, is behind, not ahead of us. What escaped Jesus did not escape Buddha: ‘If three things did not exist in the world, O disciples, the Perfect One would not appear in the world ...’. And ahead of old age and death he places the fact of birth, source of every infirmity, every disease’. (from ‘The Trouble With Being Born’ by E.M. Cioran; ©1998Arcade Books; reprint edition).

I selected that passage, after about an hour reading what is available on the internet, as indicative of what both his state of mind and his philosophical writings (the Encyclopaedia Britannica reports that he received a degree in philosophy from the University of Bucharest in 1932) would appear to stem from – the basic resentment at being born, and thus, at being here on this verdant and azure planet – and nowhere could I find any reference to an investigation by him into why this would be so.

Put succinctly: just like Mr. Gotama the Sakyan – and Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene – he was, as his articles and aphorisms clearly reflect, anti-life to the core. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25f, 2 September 2004)

RICHARD: Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies.

RESPONDENT: Most of what you say remain just words till ‘I’ is still there. In my world, I would prefer gratitude to resentment because it has worked for me so far.

RICHARD: How?

RESPONDENT: I am still not able to dedicate myself to peace on earth. But if you say annihilate ‘I’ and there will be peace on earth, I am ready for it. But in that case for me peace on earth would just be a by-product.

RICHARD: I would be very interested as to why you would want to annihilate ‘I’ ... yet not dedicate yourself to peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: I think I answered this question earlier in this mail. However I want to understand this dedication. Why would anybody dedicate himself to anything? I think it would be mostly because of feelings, emotions, attachment, greed, etc., towards that thing. If I understand you correctly you don’t have those in actual world. So why in actual world one dedicates himself to peace on earth ?

RICHARD: I was talking of you living there in the ‘real-world’, not me, here in this actual world ... I am already always living peace-on-earth. I was talking, out of experience, just what it took for this individual peace-on-earth to become apparent. The ‘I’ that inhabited this body dedicated ‘himself’ to ensuring that this would occur ... and ‘he’ self-immolated, psychologically and psychically. It was the adventure of a life-time for ‘him’ ... ‘he’ went out in a blaze of glory. It is so lovely to dedicate yourself to something so worthwhile ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then!

RESPONDENT: I must acknowledge here, that this is the first time I am having any direct communication with somebody who claims to have Enlightened (well, beyond enlightened). This is a good feeling. I am grateful to you (I know you don’t like it, but that is how I am, at least at present).

RICHARD: Okay ... but do watch out for gratitude because the warm fuzzy feeling can lead to love. Interestingly, Mr. Mohan ‘Rajneesh’ Jain told his disciples to be grateful to existence ... and to existence for sending a master.

RESPONDENT: Yes, I understand that warm fuzzy feeling because I experience it. But why should I leave it till I get something better?

RICHARD: Because it is dangerous ... 160,000,000 people have been killed in wars this century alone ... not to mention all the other wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides.(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 4, 26 January 1999)

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RESPONDENT: When I try to comprehend it I get this meaning: The burning discontent is necessary to attain virtual freedom, but after once one is in virtual freedom, the burning discontent is no more possible (and no more necessary). Do you agree?

RICHARD: In my personal experience in 1981, once I was fully launched on the one-way trip to freedom, discontent was left far, far behind. I said YES to life, the universe and what it was to be a human being – I embraced death – and the core resentment (as epitomised in the phrase ‘I didn’t ask to be born’) was eliminated upon the realisation that perfection was already always here ... now. I became as happy and as harmless as was humanly possible for twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes of the day ... this state is what the term ‘virtual freedom’ was drawn out of. At the time I considered that I had discovered the secret of living life successfully ... and boy oh boy, was I in for a surprise when it became apparent that there was more to come. Much, much more.

‘I’ did not know what it was to die ... in the peak experiences ‘I’ merely went into abeyance.

RESPONDENT: Now the next question. If there is no discontent and one is happy most of the time in virtual freedom what keeps one still going towards actual freedom?

RICHARD: Curiosity, fascination and what amounts to an obsession with finding out about oneself, about life, about the universe and about just what it is to be a human being living in the world as it is with people as they are. All this and more becomes obvious the further one proceeds ... one is inextricably drawn towards one’s destiny. It is intrinsically impelling, exciting, exhilarating, thrilling ... one is living life fully. And it keeps on becoming better and better ... one is constantly amazed at the magical quality of life itself. One experiences an ever-increasing excellence again and again ... and asks: ‘How can best get better?’ Yet it does ... and there is more ... and more ... and more.(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 4, 25 March 1999).

Q: ‘... mostly, people don’t want to be here. There is a basic resentment against being a body and being here.

R: ‘Which brings us back to the belief that life is inherently bad. In 1980, when I was looking at the stars one night, I realised that I could no longer believe that this gigantic happening called the universe could possibly be ‘set-up’ so that I would be perpetually miserable in it. Or any of us humans. It is simply too enormous for it all to be some sick joke, some divine punishment or some random accident ... what nonsense! I realised the vast perfection of everything happening all at once. From that moment on I could no longer go on believing it all to be bad. Not that I then believed it to be good ... it is no use whatsoever to be swapping one belief for another; going from a negative belief to a positive belief still leaves you living in the land of belief. Seeing the fact is what is important.

The fact is that this universe is already perfect. It is only ‘me’ who is seeing it wrongly. ‘I’, as an identity, a self, should not be here. ‘I’ live in mortal danger of being found out for the usurper that ‘I’ am ... so ‘I’ am ready and willing to believe in ‘Whatever’ to appease ‘my’ unease. ‘I’ avoid looking at the fact, for such a ‘seeing’ will lead to ‘my’ inevitable demise. ‘I’ will spin fantasies of an after-life to ensure my immortality ... anything to deny death.

*I have the greatest admiration for ‘Richard the identity’: He was willing to self-immolate so that I could be here. He never knew me, but was utterly confident that the universe knew what it was doing*. He was happy to disappear so that all this could eventuate. He was prepared to go all the way without reservation ... the ‘boots and all’ approach, he called it. What are you saving yourself for? Reach out. Extend yourself. All one gets by waiting is yet more waiting. Patience may be a virtue, but procrastination is an abomination.

Be wary of virtues ... they are designed to perpetuate the self. [emphasis added].(Richard, Audio-Taped Dialogues, Compassion Perpetuates Sorrow).

GARY: Which brings me to a point: in my investigations of what it means to be a human being, I have been struck with how much of human socializing is based on commiseration – sharing a common plight and grievance, and additionally sharing feelings and emotions: whether it be returning to work on Monday, the state of the economy, the price of gasoline, how unfairly the work place is treating you, etc., etc. Human beings seems to revel in their complaints and gripes, and a sense of resentment is the cement that seems to bind people together in many social situations. Indeed, it is the raison d’être for political groups and political causes of various types.

RICHARD: Aye ... this is something I come across almost on a daily basis and it is amazing how many people tell me that I am being ‘optimistic’, or ‘positive’, or ‘up-beat’, or that I am ‘forever trying to talk things up’. For example, I might comment upon what a great day it is and, as sure as eggs are eggs, the plighted person will find fault (even if only ‘it won’t last’) ... or I may say how marvellous it is to be living in a technologically advanced society (take contemporary surgical procedures, for instance, or current dental practice) and a whole litany of doom and gloom comes forth.

Even sitting at a caff by myself, with snippets of nearby conversations drifting by from time-to-time, it is remarkable how much of the content of social chit-chat is, as you say, gripe, grievance, complaint, and resentment ... and the last-named is the key to it all (the basic resentment of being alive in the first place).

Until one wakes up to implications and ramifications of the factuality of already being here on this planet earth anyway, whether one wants to be or not (‘I didn’t ask to be born’), one is fated to forever seek consolation and commiseration in the arms (both metaphorically and literally) of another similarly afflicted. Yet the simple fact is that, despite the ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ rhetoric, one does want to be alive (else one would have committed suicide long ago) and all that it takes is to fully acknowledge this and thus unequivocally say !YES! to being here now as this flesh and blood body ... and this affirmation is an unconditional agreement/approval of life itself as-it-is.

I did not ask to be born either (truisms can be so trite) ... but I am ever-so-glad that I was. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Gary, 24 June 2003).

IRENE to Vineeto: I am ... out to demolish ... [the] belief in the old spiritual man-made ‘ideal’ of getting rid of your self ... that Richard has augmented with getting rid of literally everything that you can possibly call human: the feelings, emotions, instincts, sense of humaneness towards other people around you, in short all that was a natural given to start off with. To be so anti-nature is called preposterous. Only a person who is deeply troubled by emotions will turn against them in anger and try to rid themselves of the whole plethora of emotional experiences (...) I don’t see Richard as free, but rather removed from being human.

RICHARD: Aye ... in fact I am so far removed from being human that I am out of sight. Indeed it is unnatural what I did and – given that it is natural to kill one’s fellow human being – I am well-pleased to be so preposterous (the word ‘preposterous’ literally means being 180 degrees in the opposite direction). However, a person ‘deeply troubled by emotions’ who will ‘turn against them in anger’ in an effort to rid themselves of the ‘whole plethora of emotional experiences’ will fail spectacularly. Speaking personally, the first thing I did in 1981 was to put an end to anger once and for all ... then I was freed enough to live in virtual freedom. It took me about three weeks and I have never experienced anger since then. The first step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for I located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ This is why remembering a PCE is so important for success for it shows one, first hand, that freedom is already always here ... now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind ... that basic resentment goes. Then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger forever. One does this by neither expressing or repressing anger when an event happens that would previously trigger an outbreak.

Anger is thus put into a bind ... and the third alternative hoves into view.(Richard, Actual Freedom List, Irene, 11 October 1998).

RESPONDENT: Richard, you have written that it took three weeks for you to rid yourself of anger.

RICHARD: You are, presumably, referring to the following text:

• [Richard]: ‘Speaking personally, the first thing I did in 1981 was to put an end to anger once and for all ... then I was freed enough to live in virtual freedom. It took me about three weeks and I have never experienced anger since then. The first step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for I located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ This is why remembering a PCE is so important for success for it shows one, first hand, that freedom is already always here ... now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind ... that basic resentment goes. Then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger forever. One does this by neither expressing or repressing anger when an event happens that would previously trigger an outbreak.
Anger is thus put into a bind ... and the third alternative hoves into view’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Irene, 11 October 1998)

RESPONDENT: Can you please sketch what you did in that time?

RICHARD: Sure ... as I was able to locate and identify that basic resentment which all people I had spoken to have – to wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ – the first thing I did was to unconditionally say !YES! to being here on earth. Remembering the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) I had experienced was vitally important for success because they showed me, first hand, that an actual freedom from the human condition is already always just here ... right now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind that basic resentment went, of course, never to return again. Then it was a relatively easy task to eliminate anger forever. I did this by neither expressing or repressing anger whenever an event happened that would previously trigger an outbreak.
Anger was thus put into a bind ... and the third alternative would hove into view.

RESPONDENT: Were you analysing, reflecting on all possible situations in which anger arises?

RICHARD: No ... it was an at-the-moment riddance.

RESPONDENT: Or were you angry at something and tried to observe it deeply?

RICHARD: No ... the instant the anger would have otherwise arisen there was the delicious experience of it being stillborn.

RESPONDENT: Were you making yourself mad by thinking about various situations and through self-observation and reasoning and attentiveness eradicated it?

RICHARD: No ... as there were more than enough situations anyway there was no need to fabricate any.

RESPONDENT: Were you isolated at this point or did this exercise with your partner?

RICHARD: Even though I was married at the time – I was a normal family man, with a wife and four children to support and a house to pay off and a car on hire-purchase, running my own business and working twelve-fourteen hour days six-seven days a week – I was essentially on my own in the whole enterprise ... my then wife, although initially intrigued and interested for herself in what I was engaged in, lapsed back into normalcy within a few months.

As a matter of related interest ... one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends ... justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on).

I have touched upon this elsewhere:

• [Richard]: ‘There is no ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ as a ‘sub-stratum of the universe’ ... they are but human inventions and do not exist in actuality. The same applies to fairness/unfairness, justice/injustice and any other human concepts that, whilst being useful for human-to-human interaction, are futility in action when applied to the universe. Male logic is as useless as female intuition when it comes to being free: the everyday reality of the ‘real-world’ is a veneer ‘I’ paste over the top of the pristine actual world by ‘my’ very being ... and ‘being’ is the savage/tender instinctual passions (giving rise to feelings of malice/love and sorrow/compassion etc., with the resultant concepts of bad/good and evil/god and so on) which cripples intelligence by invariably producing dualistic concepts.
‘Tis all a fantasy ... feelings rule in the human world’. (Richard, List B, No. 33c, 3 August 2000)

(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 66, 27 April 2005).

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RICHARD: (...) as I was able to locate and identify that basic resentment which all people I had spoken to have – to wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ – the first thing I did was to unconditionally say !YES! to being here on earth. Remembering the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s) I had experienced was vitally important for success because they showed me, first hand, that an actual freedom from the human condition is already always just here ... right now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind that basic resentment went, of course, never to return again.

RESPONDENT: Is this basic resentment the source of all depression and sorrow?

RICHARD: No, that basic resentment is what hampers sincere investigation and hinders genuine progress ... the source of sorrow itself, and thus depression and all the rest, is not being what one actually is. For instance:

• [Richard]: ‘There is only one person in this whole wide world that one can change ... myself. This is the most important point to understand thoroughly, otherwise one endlessly tries to change the other ... and as there are billions of ‘others’ it would be a life-time task with still no success at the end. If one grasps that the way to peace-on-earth is by changing oneself – and oneself only – then all of one’s interactions with others will undergo a radical transformation. You set them free of your graceless demands ... your endless neediness born out of being alone in the world. The cause of sadness and loneliness [aka sorrow] is not, as is commonly believed, alienation from others. The single reason for being alone and lonely is from not being what-I-am. By not being this flesh and blood body just brimming with sensory organs, but being, instead, an identity within ‘I’ am doomed to perpetual loneliness and aloneness. ‘I’ am fated to ever pursue an elusive ‘Someone’ or ‘Something’ that will fill that aching void.
When I am what-I-am, there is no void. By being what I actually am – this body only – I have no need for others; hence I also have no need to place the burden upon them to fulfil that what was lacking. Not only do I free myself from that perpetual pursuit, but I also free others in my company from the task ‘I’ impose upon them. Being this sensual body is actual fulfilment, each moment again. Nevermore will I be needy, greedy and grasping. Nevermore will I plot and plan and manipulate others. Nevermore will I have to prostitute myself to others to assuage those main attributes of the identity within: being lost, lonely, frightened and cunning. Being what-I-am is to be free-flowing, spontaneous, delightful ... and it is fun, for one can never be hurt again’. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive)

(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 66, 25 May 2005).

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RICHARD:

Put simply: nature is neither fair nor just – a volcanic eruption (for just one instance) does not discriminate between who or what it obliterates/ destroys – and thus coupled with the basic resentment at having to be alive in the first place is the further grievance that life is inequitable/ iniquitous.(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 76, 16 June 2005).

RESPONDENT: Okay Richard, I like the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and I am going to live with it.

RICHARD: The first thing I did when I first stepped upon the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom was to put an end to anger once and for all ... then ‘I’ was freed enough to live in a virtual freedom. It took ‘me’ about three weeks and I have never experienced anger since then. The first and crucial step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for ‘I’ located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’

This is why remembering a PCE is so important for success for it shows one, first hand, that freedom is already always here ... now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind, that basic resentment vanishes forever, and then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger once and for all. One does this by neither expressing or repressing anger when an event happens that would previously trigger an outbreak. Anger is thus put into a bind, and the third alternative hoves into view, dispensing with the hostility that is a large part of ‘I’ the aggressive psychological entity, and gently ushering in an increasing ease and generosity of character. With this growing magnanimity, one becomes more and more anonymous, more and more selflessly motivated. With this expanding altruism one becomes less and less self-centred, less and less egocentric ... the humanitarian ideals of peace, kindness, caring, benevolence and humaneness become more and more evident as an actuality. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 39, 17 October 1999a).

MARTIN: ‘I’ am fundamentally selfish and unless I temper this to some extent there’s no chance of being close to someone or liked as ‘my’ resentful urges are unrestrained (and affect my mood / disposition even if I don’t act out on them). Is becoming actually free a combination of becoming unselfish in a normal sense, and being harmless in an unconditional sense?

RICHARD: First of all, each and every identity is “fundamentally selfish” by nature – which is why it takes a powerful instinctive impulse (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinctive impulse (selfism) – insofar as blind nature endows each and every human being with the selfish instinct for individual survival and the clannish instinct for group survival (be it the familial group, the tribal group, or the national group).

(Hence the religio-spiritual practice of countering selfishness – as per the unliveable ideal of each and every ‘self’ being an unselfish ‘self’ via the nonsensical edict of each and every ‘self’ putting each and every ‘self’ before one’s own ‘self’ – is basically an institutionalised elaboration of the most primal of blind nature’s instinctual drives, urges, and impulses and, as such, is not at all intelligent).

Second, as “being harmless in an unconditional sense” is to be actually free it makes no sense to ask if becoming actually free is a combination of being that and becoming an unselfish ‘self’.

Third, rather than having to restrain your “resentful urges” forever and a day – so as to have a chance of “being close to someone or liked” as exemplified by intimacy experiences (IE’s) – why not find out why there is resentment in the first place?

Speaking personally, the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago first located the root source of all ‘his’ anger – the basic resentment at being alive (as expressed in the “I didn’t ask to be born” type of plaint) – and was thus able to rid ‘himself’ of (full-blown) anger within three weeks. (Richard, List D, Martin, 2 August 2016).

RESPONDENT: ...[the basic concerns underlying the distinction above are valid], but the feeling of aversion to the idea of feeling-good-for-its-own-sake is not.

RICHARD: Okay then ... generally speaking, an ‘aversion’ to be going about one’s everyday/ workaday life with a general feeling of well-being (a.k.a. ‘feeling good’), for the remainder of one’s life, stems from a basic resentment at being alive – of being in the sublunar realm as a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being with people as-they-are in the world as-it-is – as is epitomised by such expressive plaints as ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ or ‘It’s all just a sick joke’ or ‘Life’s a bitch with death at the end’ and so on.

Furthermore, for such a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being who is also at all thoughtful about life, the universe and what it is to be living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, any such idea of ‘feeling-good-for-its-own-sake’ ̶ let alone enjoying and appreciating being able to experience that general feeling of well-being (as in, an engaged relishing of feeling good and, thus, intimately approving being alive/ being here, by virtue of that personal delectation of ‘feeling good’ per se) as well – is a betrayal of all what they fervently hold intellectually dear, about the world in general and the human race in particular, as for them life itself is, essentially, a bum rap when all is said and done.

It is pertinent to note, at this point, that the root cause of sorrow – and, hence, malice (e.g., the ‘basic resentment’ above) – is being forever locked-out of paradise.

The ‘unjust punishment’ component (or some such similar ‘unfair’ and/or ‘inequitable’ grievance) stems from an inchoate primeval feeling of having been somehow disenfranchised from a fabulous pre-historic ‘golden age’ (e.g., the ‘Garden of Eden’ theme) posited, via variations of a ‘Status Gratiae’ style supposition, upon a numinous/ pre-sinful ‘innocence’ – or even from similarly fabulated prepubescent ‘golden years’ (e.g., the ‘Glimpses of a Golden Childhood’ theme) posited, via variations of a ‘Tabula Rasa’ style supposition, upon a juvenile/ pre-sexual ‘innocence’ – which presupposes there really is a lost ‘innocence’ to be regained.

Yet innocence as a liveable actuality – an actual innocence (not the pseudo-innocence of those ‘State of Grace’ and ‘Blank Slate’ fabulations above) in other words – is entirely new to human experience/ human history. (Richard, List D, No. 4b, 4 July 2015).

Richard: To enable one to live in virtual freedom one can, among other things, renounce resentment. For the commitment to achieving peace-on-earth to become total, for it to become a complete devotion to effecting perfection, for it to become a dedication of oneself to the consummation of the freedom-of-the-moment, one gladly forsakes humankind’s ‘wisdom of old’. That ‘wisdom’ is a wishy-washy, part-time, lip-serving, casual approach to the ultimate goal. It is called ‘Hope’. All peoples are constantly exhorted to: ‘do not lose Hope’. But, as Hope is an impoverished proxy for the actual, the resentment remains. Only by firmly renouncing resentment, by abandoning one’s commitment to proving that life on earth is a ‘vale of tears’, can one’s commitment be staunch only to the ultimate goal. One is then no longer able to agree with others that ‘life on earth is a grim business’. One will easily cease saying things like ‘I didn’t ask to be born’, or ‘sorrow is part and parcel of life’, or ‘learn to accept suffering and grow by worshipping its beauty’. All of these desperate coping-mechanisms become humbug and are never validated again. With each experience of the fact that perfection is already here, the connection becomes stronger. One is laying down a path, as it were, with each cobblestone being the reminder of the purity of the atmosphere which lies at one’s ultimate destination.

Renouncing resentment obviates the need to apply the commonly accepted antidote: gratitude. Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. As strange as it may initially seem, gratitude has the same deleterious effect upon one’s well-being as the resentment it seeks to reform. When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Virtue and Sin, Hope and Despair, Gratitude and Resentment, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity.

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