Actual Freedom – Selected Writings from Richard's Journal

They keep reality alive. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Six

It is so much fun finding an alternative way of living ... and the rewards are immensely gratifying. Each day one’s life becomes better and better, as one becomes clearer and cleaner ... and more pure. One sets this all in motion by discovering ‘what I am’. One of the many ‘truths’ that one has accepted, with no suspicion, is that ‘we are all emotional beings’. Feelings – emotions and passions – are accepted, without question, as being the touch-stone of actuality. Thus ‘who I really am’ is an emotional ‘being’ ... a psychological or psychic entity residing inside this body. This may be real, but it is not actual. ‘I’, as an emotional ‘being’ am not a fact ... ‘I’ am a belief. A belief is an emotion-backed thought, generally imported from the ‘outside’ world. The people who were already here when one was born impressed upon one that ‘I’ am real ... implying that ‘I’ am actual.

By actual I mean tangible, substantial. ‘I’ am not tangible: ‘I’ am a belief, not a fact. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Eleven

A feeling is not a fact. Feelings have led humankind astray for millennia, without ever being questioned as to whether they are the correct tools for determining the correctness of a matter. Feelings are held to be sacrosanct; they are given a credibility they do not deserve. They are seen to be the final arbiter in a contentious issue: ‘It’s a gut-feeling’, or ‘My intuition is never wrong’, or ‘It feels right’, and so on. Thought, shackled by emotion and passion, cannot operate with the clarity it is capable of. At the centre of feelings lies a passionate entity known as the soul. The soul, which has no substance whatsoever, is revered as being the seat of ‘me’; it is ‘my’ essential ‘being’. The feeling of ‘being’ is the impression of being present; it is the perception of a ‘presence’ that transcends time and space … giving rise to the improper assumption that ‘I’ am Immortal. It must be stressed again that all this is derived from calenture; nothing in this has any facticity. This is because ‘I’ generate unfortunate misinformation on account of ‘being’. ‘I’ may be real ... but ‘I’ am not actual. Reality is not actuality. Reality is a world-view created and sustained by emotive thought. This affective vision is a blinkered version of what is actual. Time is actual, space is actual … and any personal interpretation of the actual is an emotional transubstantiation of it into an illusion called reality.

To then transcend this reality is to take a mystical leap into an Other-Worldly Realm … a Supernatural Reality. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Eighteen

Being here now is to put your money where your mouth is, as it were. All other actions are methods, devices, techniques ... which are, in effect, delaying tactics. The most sincere form of flattery is not, as is commonly practised, imitating all the other people’s performance of standing back and expressing a feeling. To feel an emotion or be passionate about life is nowhere near the same as actually being here now. In being here now one is completely involved. Being here now is total inclusion. One demonstrates one’s appreciation of life by partaking fully in existence ... by letting this moment live one so that one is doing what is happening. One dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here now as the universe’s experience of itself.

When ‘I’ willingly and voluntarily sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological or psychic identity residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what one holds most dear. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Twenty-Four

Strangely enough, my findings are apparently the cause of some controversy among my peers; my exposures of society’s Holy Cows are received as ruthless iconoclasm. Their sensibilities are offended; feeling attacked in their beliefs anger and hurt follow automatically.

Human beings are taught from an early age to make the offending person feel guilty for ‘hurting my feelings’. The offender is equally trained to then feel remorse … and is compelled to repent and apologise. The power now lies with the hurt person, who is programmed to graciously forgive. If this bizarre operation is carried out to its inevitable conclusion ‘we are now friends again’ … and all should be forgiven and forgotten. However, the one apologising feels resentful for being the loser in this power-battle and secretly plots revenge at the first possible opportunity. The one forgiving feels grateful for winning, but secretly despises the abjection of the loser. Equity, the essential prerequisite for intimacy, is nowhere to be found. Thus the entire time-honoured process – one of society’s Holy Cows – is fatally flawed.

It can only ensure the on-going ‘battle of wills’ ... which is a misnomer because it actually is an egocentric drive for supremacy. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Three

Can the heart and mind be free of hurts and slights? Can the heart and mind be free from succour and compliments as well? This is important, for the positive is as insidious as the negative when it comes to holding on to whatever from the past. There must be an attainment of freedom from the past in whatever form it takes for ‘I’ am these hurts and compliments … it is, in part, what ‘I’ am made up of. ‘I’ have a vested interest in taking offence, for it endorses the very nature of ‘me’ as soul. ‘I’ thrive on receiving praise for it feeds ‘me’ as ego. Both hurts and compliments give ‘me’ the nourishment ‘I’ need to survive. By not taking offence or receiving praise, ‘I’ have made a good start in undoing myself. Thus the past, the present and the future become less and less real as the sense of ‘I’ as an enduring entity, continuing over time, is dependent upon emotion-backed reverie and speculative apprehension fuelling the fires of malice and sorrow. ‘I’ am, in part, a product of sentimental and superstitious time.

The other part of what ‘I’ am made up of is beliefs: One’s sense of identity is largely made up of beliefs … beliefs and feelings. In fact, a belief is an emotion-backed thought. The vast majority of the beliefs that one carries are not invented by oneself; they were imbibed with the mother’s milk and added to thereupon up to the present day. They are inherited beliefs, put into the child with love and fear – reward and punishment – and added to as an adult out of awe and dread – the carrot and the stick. It behoves one to examine each and every belief – especially those that pass for ‘truths’ – and watch them disappear out of one’s life forever. It is no wonder human beings are such a desperate lot. Beliefs and feelings are the bane of humankind ... they have been so instrumental in killing, maiming, torturing and otherwise causing such pain and suffering since the dawn of human history, that one wonders that they are given any credence at all these days.

It is so liberating to be free of beliefs – of believing itself – and feelings that I cannot recommend their elimination highly enough. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirty-Four

Some people have become professional protesters; it is their life’s work, their raison d’être. Strangely enough, they are often people engaged in the Human Potential Movement or the Spiritual Quest; firm adherents to the concepts of Personal Growth and Spiritual Enlightenment. Such people profess to be peace-loving activists, although their actions more than often belie their words. They are usually simmering with barely suppressed hostility, eagerly awaiting the next cause they can become involved in. Some of them have attached themselves to a self-declared Saviour of Mankind that they believe in; a Saviour who comes out with their Divine brand of protest against life as-it-is, here on earth as an actuality. Such is not my way of doing things; I am incapable of manifesting the requisite rage and wretchedness. I have achieved my personal peace-on-earth and I am unable to generate ill will any longer.

Of course I could go with her to the protest rally for it is not against any principle that I hold. I readily concede that demonstrations can ‘get things done’. That is not my point ... my point is the unwholesome atmosphere inhering at these rallies that reinforces the identity. The insalubrious ambience is always thick with ‘vibes’ that are palpable and factually unpleasant; be they going under the name of hate or love. Apparently she gets a ‘high’ from this, as further discussion with her elucidates the actual reason – the secretive motivation – for her attraction to these events. She admits, rather shame-facedly, that the ‘high’ makes her feel ‘alive’; by which she indicates that her daily life is dull, boring. She finds it thrilling to be at a confrontation; the adrenaline ‘buzz’ of a perceived imminent danger is irresistible to an addict. She does not appreciate the implied suggestion that she might very well be a ‘junkie’ herself, however.

Yet it is not only hate that can induce the body to manufacture a chemical which can create dependence, causing substance abuse. Love can similarly prompt the body to produce an addictive chemical … and habituation to love’s drug is well-known enough to require no further amplification. It is the snake-oil unvaryingly peddled by the Enlightened Ones. Nobody seems to question the validity of allowing feelings – emotions and passions – to be both the arbiter of and the solution to, all of life’s problems. Feelings have created far more problems than they have ever solved, anywhere and at anytime. The question to ask oneself is: why does one require any nervous stimuli at all? Why does one endlessly seek excitement? Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Twenty-Five

It is an adventure and a delight to simply be alive, when one is free from the ‘I’ that has taken control of one’s body; the hunt for the ‘thrills and spills’ that is so endemic in the real world is over. It is ‘I’ who is easily bored, incessantly pursuing excitement. As ‘I’ am not actually here, one needs to feel that ‘I’ am real ... that one is ‘alive’. The body can be persuaded to produce quite an array of chemicals; a veritable cocktail is available to the insidious entity that has taken up psychological and psychic residence within. Whereas I am already alive for I am actual. I am never bored, because being here now as-I-am is an escapade in itself. It takes great daring to be here now; anyone who has heeded my words and contemplated the actuality of what I am saying and doing, has reported to me that they invariably experience fear ... and I too have known the full gamut of the anxious terror and horror and dread of the existential angst that comes as a result of activating the desire to disclose oneself as the contingent ‘being’ one fears one is. Initially one is deathly afraid to actually be here now, as it can feel rather rudely raw … one feels more naked and exposed than taking off one’s clothing in the market place.

However, feeling rudely raw about the prospect of being here now is not the same as actually being here now. A feeling is not a fact; it is an identity’s interpretation of the actual and is therefore unreliable as a means of ascertaining the direct experience of being here now. Being here now is to be at the place and time where all is pristine. This pristine place is this, the actual world … and it is already always here. This actual world is original; unmarred, uncorrupted, unspoiled, spotless, fresh and perpetually new. It is alarming to feel this immaculateness – it is frightening in its immediate intimacy – which is why one backs off, initially denying its very existence. What happens though, if one takes the risk to actually be here now – instead of standing back and feeling it out in order to make up one’s mind – is that one discovers that oneself is also pristine. There is no differentiation between that something which is precious and me. I am that stillness experiencing itself ... I am pristine, through and through.

By daring to be here now, by being me as-I-am, I have already ‘cleaned up’ all the pollution ... by not being polluted at all in the first place. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Twenty-Five

It is a life utterly wasted if one spends it on merely searching for meaning. The search for meaning is not the point of life. Hope is a poor substitute for actually living the reason for existence. It is possible to not only seek but to find ... thereby enabling one to live life in full meaning twenty-four-hours-a-day. The problem with the people who embark upon the search for meaning is that they approach it in the incorrect way. One cannot think one’s way into meaning … nor can one feel one’s way, either. Thinking and feeling – through logical imagination and irrational intuition – are the two tools that everyone has been taught to use to conduct the affairs of their everyday life: they are not at all appropriate for uncovering the perfection that they are searching for. There is an unimaginable purity that is born out of the stillness of the infinitude as manifest at this moment in time and this place in space ... but one will not come upon it by thinking about or feeling out its character. It is most definitely not a matter to be pursued in the rarefied atmosphere of the most refined mind or the evocative milieu of the most impassioned heart. To proceed thus is to become involved in a fruitless endeavour to make life fit into one’s own petty demands and desires.

Life is not like that … one has only to look into the marvels of nature to see that life-forms have arranged themselves in a myriad of exquisitely delicate shapes, colours, textures, qualities and character. So too has the universe gracefully arranged itself in regards to providing intrinsic meaning. The universe is innately perfect and pure. It is already always immaculate and consummate. Nothing ‘dirty’ can breach the blameless bastions of this unimpeachable purity and perfection ... even the most profound thoughts and the most sublime feelings are self-centred. The self – ‘I’– is not only defiled, it is corrupt through and through. ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting.

‘I’ am rotten at the very core. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Seventeen

I am sitting here talking with my companion of the last eleven years … or I should say my former companion as we are discussing her new life in her own home. She is moving out because she can no longer live up to all that she has said and written about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in a virtual freedom. She understands only too well that she cannot stand beside me and personally verify all that I have to say … and I have plenty to say. After all these delicious years of living together and exploring together, a rather salient and curiously unforeseen event has taken place. She has fallen in love … and has spent the last six weeks endeavouring to come to terms with the shifting kaleidoscope of passions that swing her from one point of view to another. All the experiential understanding of a virtual freedom gets tossed aside in the twinkling of an eye … only to come back solidly when she is able to come to her senses once again. We recorded one of our conversations only two weeks ago in order to have something factual – other than one’s notoriously unreliable memory – to fall back upon in the times of love’s stress.

I ask: ‘Is actual intimacy still vastly superior to love?’

‘Oh yes, because love spoils it; love is actually a great spoiler of intimacy. Love is incredibly self-centred, demanding, wanting, needing … it must have. It is an unfortunate force that comes into one’s life.’

‘An unfortunate force?’

‘Because when there is actual intimacy there is a pleasure that is more substantial, more of the earth, of me - of my body – and all of my body is intimate. It is that orgastic sensation.’

‘And as you are now, there is no yearning, pining, longing … which is the down-side of love.’

‘And the disappointment … none of that operates in actual intimacy. In love there can be a bruising going on.’

‘Bruising?’

‘Because of the emotion. After the emotion has gone there is a bruising feeling; I don’t want that emotion because it bruises me again and again. I don’t want the love of another person to ‘fill me up’.’

‘What is that ‘bruising’?’

‘You can either feel tired or you can have a whingeing pressure pain around the heart and diaphragm… and that is what I would call a bruising. It’s after the emotion has already gone.’

‘Oh, you do not mean bruised emotionally?’

‘No, it’s physical. The emotion is an onslaught on my physical body … that’s how I would experience an emotion. It’s like … you are feeling great and your heart starts pounding and you …’

‘Are you saying that emotions are unhealthy for the body?’

‘Yes, it’s good to have as little of them as possible … rather none at all. This does not mean that therefore one should repress them. When an emotion is there, take it in hand … put it in the middle of the table, as it were, and walk around it, have a good look at it and feel every aspect of it. Become aware of it and ask: ‘What is so good about this emotion’?’

‘Some people would say to let go of it …’

‘No, no, no. I don’t ‘let go of it’. By looking at it, it goes. This looking and feeling is looking and feeling with total awareness … all of me is aware of what this emotion is doing to me as this body. Where, in the body, do I feel it the most? Does it really feel good? Is it one hundred per cent good? No, it is not … there is always a ‘Yes, but …’. Even the good emotions can never live up to what they promise. By looking at them they disappear; you see how unnecessary they are. That is with hindsight of course, for you cannot see that they are unnecessary – that there is ‘life after emotions’ - when you are in the grip of the emotion. This is getting to the ‘nitty-gritty’ of me. It is so fascinating … all these emotions have always kept me in existence. The ‘Good’ emotions are also me. This is my self.’

‘This is what you are. It is often said ‘We are emotional beings’. It is excellent to be rid of this for one can see clearly, understand cleanly and act appropriately. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirty-Six

The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem … backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the four basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary self, transformed into an identity, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this pernicious entity. ‘My’ extinction was the ending of not only fear, but of all of the affective faculties. Extinction releases one into actuality ... as this flesh and blood body only I am living in the paradisiacal garden that this verdant planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in time and this place in space.

This actual world is an ambrosial paradise. Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Thirty-Five