Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

February 05 2005

RESPONDENT: I just came across the website a couple of days ago, and quickly tossed my meditation practice and any other remnants of Buddhist belief.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list ... and to the world of commonsense.

RESPONDENT: This was pretty drastic for me, since I live in a monastery and sat 4 hours a day (I’m not a monk though). The past couple of days sans sitting have been interesting, in that I picked up surfing again (it’s still fun!), and experienced joy a couple of times. I’m not sure if those experiences were PCE’s, but they were blissful and feels like I could control them in a way. I guess there was still an I that I feel could squeeze joy out of the moment, so I don’t know. So is a PCE blatantly obvious that one loses the sense of I completely?

RICHARD: Yes.

RESPONDENT: Like a merging into the moment?

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: As far as the method, why is it necessary to ask ‘of being alive’?

RICHARD: Because this moment is the only moment one is ever alive ... the past, although it was actual whilst it was happening, is not actual now and the future, although it will be actual when it happens, is not actual now.

RESPONDENT: Isn’t it obvious that ‘How am I experiencing this moment?’ can only be asked by me if I’m alive?

RICHARD: The past me, whilst being alive then, is not alive now and the future me, although being alive then, is not alive now ... one is only ever alive now.

RESPONDENT: So, let’s say I feel lonely. I ask, then respond ‘I experience loneliness’, then I try to search for the cause of loneliness, which I think is conditioning of previous experiences of companionship, imprinted in me expectations of the moment. These don’t seem to be one specific point in time, but rather a vague overall experience with a past relationship. So, is that the correct procedure?

RICHARD: This is the essential part of how I have previously described the way the identity who used to inhabit this flesh and blood body enabled the already always existing peace-on-earth into being apparent:

• [Richard]: ‘Before applying the actualism method – the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – it is essential for success to grasp the fact that this very moment which is happening now is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All one gets by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here; it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if one misses it this time around, hey presto, one has another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.
What ‘I’ did, all those years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective way to be able to enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive each moment again (I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). It does take some doing to start off with but, as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it becomes progressively easier to enjoy and appreciate being here each moment again. One begins by asking, each moment again, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?
Note: asking how one is experiencing this moment of being alive is not the actualism method; consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is. And this is because the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself.
This perpetual enjoyment and appreciation is facilitated by feeling as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible. And this (affective) felicity/ innocuity is potently enabled via minimisation of both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings. An affective awareness is the key to maximising felicity and innocuity over all those alternate feelings inasmuch the slightest diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation automatically activates attentiveness.
Attentiveness to the cause of diminished enjoyment and appreciation restores felicity and innocuity. The habituation of actualistic awareness and attentiveness requires a persistent initialisation; persistent initialisation segues into a wordless approach, a non-verbal attitude towards life. It delivers the goods just here, right now, and not off into some indeterminate future. Plus the successes are repeatable – virtually on demand – and thus satisfy the ‘scientific method’.
So, ‘I’ asked myself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?
As one knows from the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s), which are moments of perfection everybody has at some stage in their life, that it is possible to experience this moment in time and this place in space as perfection personified, ‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most (‘feeling good’ is an unambiguous term – it is a general sense of well-being – and if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means ... then do not even bother trying to do this at all).
Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good ... but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand ... with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. And, of course, once one does get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ ... and after that to ‘feeling perfect’.
The more one enjoys and appreciates being just here right now – to the point of excellence being the norm – the greater the likelihood of a PCE happening ... a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing the magical event, which indubitably shows where everyone has being going awry, to occur. Plus any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway.
The wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity/ innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way.
One is thus soon back on track ... and all because of everyday events. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

RESPONDENT: Find the cause to whatever unhappiness, then look at it?

RICHARD: Find the cause of, at the very least, feeling good ceasing to happen ... then one is back to feeling good (at the very least) again.

RESPONDENT: Then find the belief/more that causes it, and kill it?

RICHARD: Find the belief/ more/ whatever and, seeing the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive, one is once more feeling good (at the very least) ... but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old.

RESPONDENT: What about when I feel neither too happy nor unhappy?

RICHARD: Then that is what is preventing one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive ... and it is rather silly, is it not, to waste this only moment one is ever alive by feeling neither too happy nor unhappy?

RESPONDENT: What cause is there for those neutral moments?

RICHARD: Once one realises that those very ‘neutral moments’ are standing in the way of enjoying and appreciating this, the only moment one is ever alive, one will have the motivation to soon find the cause so as to not have them happen ... preferably ever again.

RESPONDENT: Like, brushing my teeth, for example, it’s not the most happy, but no pain either.

RICHARD: Yet the moment in which the teeth-brushing happens is the most happy (and harmless) moment ... which felicity could be experienced if it be not for the feeling of neutrality standing in the way of such exquisite existence being experienced, that is.

RESPONDENT: Last question, is going surfing everyday an escape from actuality?

RICHARD: Not necessarily ... in fact the search for the perfect wave is actually born out of experiencing perfection when riding same previously (although it was not so much the perfect wave, so to speak, of course but the perfection experience).

RESPONDENT: Or can it be an expression of happiness and harmlessness.

RICHARD: As whatever one does can be, in actuality, an expression of happiness and harmlessness – or, rather, the benignity and benevolence of this material universe – it is somewhat moot to single out surfing (as opposed to, for instance, cleaning one’s teeth) as being that.

RESPONDENT: I think it’s pretty harmless and produces happiness, but the only problem is when the waves aren’t good or when it’s crowded.

RICHARD: Aye ... surf rage (at another dropping in for example) is hardly harmless and unsuitable-for-surfing waves are hardly the stuff of surfing happiness.

Yet, and harking back to the topic at hand, asking oneself, each moment again (such as a moment of surf rage/wave disappointment), how one is experiencing this moment (this surfing rage/wave disappointment moment) of being alive – the only moment one is ever alive – will quickly disabuse oneself of the justification for wasting this only moment one can ever be happy and harmless in by choosing for maliciousness and/or sorrowfulness instead.

Ain’t life grand!

*

P.S.: Just by-the-by: another way of wasting this moment of being alive is by choosing to be impatient.

February 07 2005

RESPONDENT: Thank you, Richard, for your reply. Another issue I’d like to discuss is nurture. I understand it is the instinctual passion that leads to compassion which is the main tenet of most spiritualist dogma.

In spiritualism individual sorrow can be sublimated/ transcended so as to become/be universal sorrow – sorrow for all suffering beings – and has the effect of transmogrifying the affective ‘being’ within the body (the instinctually passional being) into an all-encompassing transcendental ‘Being’ ... a (dissociated) entity of grandiose, albeit pathetic, proportions.

RESPONDENT: The concept of altruism is different in that one engages in a spontaneous process of selfless action, as opposed to helping in a compassionate, holier-than-thou way.

RICHARD: The word altruism can be used in two distinctly different ways – in a virtuous sense (as in being an unselfish/ selfless self) or in a zoological/ biological sense (as in being diametrically opposite to selfism) – and it is the latter which is of particular interest to a person wanting to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, as it takes a powerful instinctive impulse (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinctive impulse (selfism) ... 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).

By and large the instinct for survival of the group is the more powerful – as is epitomised in the honey-bee (when it stings to protect/defend the hive it dies) – and it is the utilisation of this once-in-a-lifetime gregarian action which is referred to in my oft-repeated ‘an altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice/ ‘self’-immolation, in toto, for the benefit of this body and that body and every body’.

RESPONDENT: So, in my life, I recently decided to pursue just the masters in physics (instead of the previously intended PhD), so that I could move back in with my parents and ‘help’ them free themselves of their interpersonal obstructions. (My mom is over 50 and my dad is over 70) This was before I came to actualism, and I had intended to go back there to serve as an example of spiritualist practice. Now, however, I’m not sure what my agenda is in planning on moving back. On one hand, its that gut-feeling instinct to care for and support (emotionally and financially) my ‘tribe’. This also fulfils the social Asian-American duty of filiality, which I did not intend. On the other hand, this type of compassion and social identity obedience to being a ‘good son’ is exactly the stuff I’ve always wanted to obliterate.

So, my question is, is it possible to go through with these plans in an altruistic manner, like saving someone who is in danger?

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: Another issue, related to this one, is my choice of career. I was considering teaching physics at the HS level, because I understand there is a shortage of science teachers in California. Is this also a part of the instinctual duty to fulfil the needs of society?

RICHARD: Not necessarily, no ... one does need to put food/ water into the belly, and a roof over the head/clothes on the back (if the weather be inclement), and in this day and age the main way of obtaining the necessary wherewithal is through the covert slavery euphemistically known as ‘earning a living’.

RESPONDENT: Thank you for your help.

RICHARD: You are very welcome.

February 09 2005

RESPONDENT: (...) I recently decided to pursue just the masters in physics (instead of the previously intended PhD), so that I could move back in with my parents and ‘help’ them free themselves of their interpersonal obstructions. (My mom is over 50 and my dad is over 70) This was before I came to actualism, and I had intended to go back there to serve as an example of spiritualist practice. Now, however, I’m not sure what my agenda is in planning on moving back. On one hand, its that gut-feeling instinct to care for and support (emotionally and financially) my ‘tribe’. This also fulfils the social Asian-American duty of filiality, which I did not intend. On the other hand, this type of compassion and social identity obedience to being a ‘good son’ is exactly the stuff I’ve always wanted to obliterate.

So, my question is, is it possible to go through with these plans in an altruistic manner, like saving someone who is in danger?

RICHARD: No.

RESPONDENT: Do you mean that if I move back in with my parents, that would not be an altruistic act ...

RICHARD: It would not be an instinctive altruistic act (as in your ‘like saving someone who is in danger’ phrasing) ... no, not at all, obviously.

RESPONDENT: ... [Do you mean that if I move back in with my parents, that would not be an altruistic act] but rather an act of compassion (as in sharing sorrow)?

RICHARD: I did not mean anything other than it is not possible to go through with those plans in a like-saving-someone-who-is-in-danger manner of altruism.

RESPONDENT: I wonder if I could go back there and practice the AF method so that by changing myself and myself only that would automatically lead to alleviating my parents’ emotional issues.

RICHARD: Given that your original plan, prior to coming across The Actual Freedom Trust web site a couple of days before posting your initial e-mail at 2:20 PM on Wednesday 2/02/2005 AEDST – which is six days before posting this e-mail – was to move back in with your parents and ‘help’ them free themselves of their interpersonal obstructions by serving as an example of spiritualist practice (via having had meditation practices/ buddhistic beliefs and having lived in a monastery/sat four hours day) there is a distinct possibility that your current plan is an accommodation to your original motivation (filial/tribal duty), non?

Incidentally, and also given you said you are now not sure what your agenda is, does living with your parents whilst pursuing just the masters in physics (instead of the previously intended PhD) have anything to do with the convenience of ready-made board and lodging – aka the basic necessities of life – just as currently living in a monastery does?

February 10 2005

RESPONDENT: I wonder if I could go back there [move back in with my parents] and practice the AF method so that by changing myself and myself only that would automatically lead to alleviating my parents’ emotional issues.

RICHARD: Given that your original plan, prior to coming across The Actual Freedom Trust web site a couple of days before posting your initial e-mail at 2:20 PM on Wednesday 2/02/2005 AEDST – which is six days before posting this e-mail – was to move back in with your parents and ‘help’ them free themselves of their interpersonal obstructions by serving as an example of spiritualist practice (via having had meditation practices/ buddhistic beliefs and having lived in a monastery/sat four hours day) there is a distinct possibility that your current plan is an accommodation to your original motivation (filial/tribal duty), non?

RESPONDENT: That’s one of the issues I’ve been mulling over. I don’t feel attached to my parents in any filial sense, but I suppose the socially conditioned ‘ethic’ of keeping my promise to move back is what I need to examine more closely.

RICHARD: As your promise was to move back in with your parents as an example of spiritualist practice (via having had meditation practices/ buddhistic beliefs and having lived in a monastery/sat four hours day) – and not as a practitioner of the actualism method – is it not more a case of no longer subscribing to their beliefs and practices that is the issue ... rather than anything else?

RESPONDENT: When I originally told my mom, she was ecstatic, and if I were to tell her that I changed my mind, I fear that I would cause harm, which goes against being ‘harmless.’

RICHARD: What the word ‘harmless’ refers to, on both The Actual Freedom Trust web site and mailing list, is being sans malice – just as being happy refers to being without sorrow – thus provided there be no malice generating/ driving/ motivating one’s thoughts, words, or actions, being no longer capable of fulfilling a previously made pledge can in no way be going against being harmless.

None of this is to deny that another’s feelings may, and can be, self-induced to feel hurt as a result ... the simple fact of the matter is that if they choose to harbour such feelings that is their business.

Put simply: one does not become either actually or virtually free of the human condition just to be guided by and/or run by other people’s feelings ... here is a classic example:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Fallacy are you man. Go to fuck with a duck and don’t bother me, idiot. My feelings are not extinct, as yours, and listening you is bringing to my ego a strong sense of repugnance. Is it clear, big sod? (...) You are a malicious sod, a repulsive cyber guru that gets me nausea because my feelings are not extinct and listening your shit is too much for my ego. Was not clear that you are a pure fallacy, was not clear my meaning?
• [Richard]: ‘Am I to take it that, because you feel nausea (and, previously, repugnance) when reading my words, these feelings then prove that I am ‘a pure fallacy’? In other words, your feelings are to be taken as being the arbiter of what I am? Are you really telling me that I am to be guided by your feelings?
I did not spend eleven years, delving deep into the depths of ‘my’ psyche (which is the ‘human’ psyche) exposing, and thus eliminating through the exposure, anything whatsoever that was insalubrious ... only to be run by your feelings when I came onto the internet to share my discoveries with my fellow human being.
Look, it is this simple: for as long as you continue to be as you currently are then I am sure you will find, as a consequence, that other people’s responses will have the self-induced effect on you of you feeling nausea, repugnance or whatever other feeling that you may thus activate in that entire repertoire of feelings you nurse to your bosom’. (Richard, List B, No. 53, 17 May 2001).

RESPONDENT: Is this fear part of the social conditioning package?

RICHARD: Aye ... many years ago the identity inhabiting this body was conversing with ‘his’ then mother-in-law, painstakingly explaining why’ he’ was no longer able to do something – something which eludes memory nowadays – and was both surprised and pleased to hear the following words ‘he’ spoke in response to her reproachful ‘oh, you have hurt my feelings’ (manipulative) reply to ‘his’ carefully explicated account:

• ‘Then why carry [harbour/nurse] such feelings ... surely you leave yourself open to all manner of hurt by doing so?’

Needless is it to add that ‘he’ was to ask himself that very question on many an occasion from that day forwards?

*

RICHARD: Incidentally, and also given you said you are now not sure what your agenda is, does living with your parents whilst pursuing just the masters in physics (instead of the previously intended PhD) have anything to do with the convenience of ready-made board and lodging – aka the basic necessities of life – just as currently living in a monastery does?

RESPONDENT: I won’t move back until I’m done with the masters, and living in the monastery right now isn’t really like how most people live in monasteries. I’m in my office at university all day (besides for surfing) and then I just go back to the monastery to sleep. So, moving back to my parents’ would be more convenient, but this wasn’t ever a big issue for me, because I’ve been on my own (necessities-wise) for 5 years and I do enjoy the independence. So this is minor compared to the aforementioned issue of benefiting my parents.

RICHARD: In which case, then, that brings it all back to the issue of filial/tribal duty ... because otherwise it would matter not whom you move in with (along with the intention of automatically leading to an alleviation of their emotional issues by practicing the actualism method in order to change yourself and yourself only).

In other words, why not move in with Mr./Ms. Smith, of High Street, Any-Town with that intention?