Actual Freedom – Audio-Taped Dialogues

R: There is a school of thought that says it is better to express your feelings rather than suppress them. It is an invidious choice – what about the third alternative? Get rid of all emotions and passions. Eradicate them from one’s life in such a way that they never come back. Never. For the rest of one’s life there will never be any disturbing feelings to upset the apple-cart. They are rubbed out. Finished. Extirpated.

Q: Therapists know what to do with a particular person in order to get them to express their feelings. In an encounter group they see when a person is on the verge of crying, on the verge of difficulty and you can learn to detect it. It is simply a matter of doing it a lot. Eventually it doesn’t work any more ... you can go into your exacerbation, your frustration, your anger, your rage ... initially you can come to peace, to bliss even, through intense emotion and passion; but ultimately it doesn’t work. It has only a temporary effect.

R: This is the attraction to self-help, personal-growth groups: it has an instant, but short term, result. An unaware person can be deluded into thinking something worthwhile is happening and spend a lot of money obtaining what amounts to a ‘quick fix’.

Q: Besides, why would you want to keep your anger, your rage? Get rid of them. You can live without fear, you can live without guilt ... any of these emotions are a rotten feeling. Once you click to it what a rotten feeling it is ... once you realise what a rotten feeling irritation is, let alone anger, let alone rage, you don’t want them any more.

R: Even getting peeved.

Q: Even getting peeved. Like: it’s hard work to do those things.

R: They spoil an otherwise nice moment of being alive.

Q: Spoil, yes. They are a waste of time. What for? Because everybody else does them? So what? I would never ‘own my anger’ or ‘honour my rage’. Get rid of them!

Q(1): They say, at the beginning of the group: ‘What do you want to experience?’

Q: So it’s a voluntary thing. They want to experience a specific feeling; they must get a kick out of feeling it.

Q(2): For me, I experienced my rage like never before. It was different in a group of women; I was naked and it had a different dynamic to it. I was sharing myself completely, my anger, my rage ... I was exposing myself, my ugly side.

Q: So it’s good to experience it? But it’s not something you would want to keep on doing for the rest of your life, is it?

Q(2): No. But it enabled me to feel more confident about myself.

Q: So in your daily life, in the house you shared with other women – who have also done the same group – when a situation came up were you all able to sit around a table amicably ‘owning your anger’ and ‘honoring your rage’?

Q(2): No. The tension in that house was actually nasty. Especially in the morning when I would get up. Sometimes we wouldn’t even speak to each other ... it was horrible

R: What we are trying to get at is this: what are the long-term benefits for doing these groups?

Q(1): Confidence. Being able to express yourself before a group of women.

R: Yet one can achieve the same by doing a public speaking course. Surely you are talking about over-coming stage fright. Performing in public is what the majority of people are most afraid of. What are the long-term effects of doing workshops ... out in one’s daily life?

Q: I see genuine confidence in [Q(2)] since starting on the path of actual freedom ... and that was after all these groups. There was paranoia, for example, that’s not what I’d call being confident in one’s daily life. So the confidence that you saw as a result of the groups was only skin-deep; it is of the moment, enhanced by all the other participants.

Q(1): Yes, I can agree ... that group confidence is false.

Q: It’s utterly false ... it’s so pretentious. It is a re-enforcement of being an identity.

R: So what is the long-term effect? This specific group that we are all referring to has had remarkable results in the wider community, has it not? There has been much publicity about the betrayals, the hatreds, the anger ... not to mention all that psychic stuff flashing about. Shall we be frank? It has not worked well at all. On the contrary, it has had deleterious consequences for all concerned. How can anything good be said about it?

Look. None of these encounter groups, self-help groups and the such-like have produced any beneficial results to either the individual or the wider community. The whole notion that it was better to express than suppress came into popularity about twenty-five to thirty years ago. It has had a fair trial, has it not? It has not worked. Where is the evidence that it has had long-term beneficial results? I see only abject failure.

Q(1): Oh! I don’t like to hear that! Although what you say is true, I don’t want to ... do you mean to say that nothing we have all tried has worked? I don’t want to hear that we have all been wasting our time for thirty years! Nothing that any human anywhere has tried has worked?

R: Where is there peace and tranquillity? Where is there happiness and harmony? Where is there an absence of malice and sorrow? How does one determine success? By looking around with clear eyes. There is no Peace On Earth, anywhere ... nor has there been at any time in human history.

By neither expressing nor repressing emotions, something new can happen. The emotion is put into a bind, it has nowhere to go. Next time anger, say, comes up in a situation, simply decline to have it happen. Observe it as it gets up to all kinds of tricks to have its way. Do not express it – but do not repress it either. Watch what happens ... you will be surprised. Personally, I rid myself of anger in about three weeks when I started on this all those years ago. The more subtle variations like getting peeved, getting irritated and getting annoyed took a little longer, but losing my temper in an angry outburst ended after about three weeks. I kid you not. It all has to do with the determination to succeed, with patience and diligence born out of the pure intent garnered from a peak experience. You just know that it is possible to be peaceful because you have seen it for yourself. One will do whatever is required to be that experience, twenty-four-hours of the day.

Here we can start afresh. Here we can have success.