VINEETO: In order to clean up my act I had to stop getting involved in other people’s lives – as in giving advice, commiserating, being busy with everyone’s emotions or exchanging resentments about how tough life is. I became very ‘self’-obsessed, only concerned about my own emotions and how I can investigate and eliminate them.

GARY: One has to be ‘selfish’ in that way no doubt. Actualism would probably not appeal to people who are still busybodies or do-gooders.

VINEETO: About a year into the process it became apparent that, in becoming less and less of an emotionally driven being and therefore less ‘self’-centred, my range of perception and attention had broadened. It was then that I understood that altruism has nothing to do with my former ethical ideal of unselfishness but that it arises out of the fact that we are all fellow human beings and that I want the best for me and every other human being. When one is honest and sincere, the best contribution to peace-on-earth means freeing myself and others from the burden of my animal instinctual passions – ‘self’-immolation.

GARY: Lately I have been looking at what a burden that really is. I can see that I, being born into this world, was burdened with these passions and that I have similarly burdened others with them. All my cares and woes as a human being really do burden the people around me and place incredible demands on the others for care, dependency, nurture, etc. When I free myself from malice and sorrow, I am fundamentally freeing both myself and all those others who I am related to in my life, even people who I may never actually meet. My father once told me, when I was younger, that all he ever wanted for me in life was for me to be happy, because I was plainly so miserable. I am glad to oblige the elder in every way. 27.8.2000

VINEETO: I knew from my pure consciousness experience that I wanted intimacy – the innocent ever-fresh fascination that I experienced first in those moments with Peter, not knowing what he is going to say or do next and being unconditionally curious and attentive. This goal of actual intimacy was my guiding line, this is the quality in which I want to relate to people. Therefore I was eager and willing to find out how I can live this actual intimacy that I experienced in my PCE.

GARY: Actual intimacy is the quality in which I want to relate to people in my life. Everyone. Not just a select few. Usually when using the word ‘intimacy’ people refer to the special sense of coziness or closeness they reserve for their relation to their spouse or sexual and romantic partner. But I am seeing that one can be ‘intimate’ with everyone one relates to. And this is the quality that I have experienced in PCEs that I have had – there is that magical quality of naiveté and curiosity with others that makes relating to others – people on the street, casual strangers, etc. – so free and easy. As I investigated into the primitive animal instinct of fear, I don’t think I ever realized how frightened I have been of other people all my life. In all my contacts with others – personally and professionally – there has always been a strong undercurrent of fear, experienced as wariness, suspicion, distrust, aloofness, etc. I have always kept my guard up in situations. Now I can bring full attentiveness to investigating this sense of needing to keep my guard up, with the accompanying social identity that needs to be protected, and the underlying primitive instinct of fear that causes these reactions. I can experiment with letting my guard down deliberately and joyfully in situations that used to trigger alarm and defensiveness. This is an exciting adventure and it is a considerable satisfaction to find that Actual Intimacy is possible with everyone, not just one’s sexual or romantic partner. 2.10.2000

PETER: The quickest, most direct and most effective way of determining what is fact, i.e. what works and what doesn’t work, is by your own life experiences. By the time mid-life comes around, most people have had sufficient life experiences to already know what doesn’t work and only if there is still some doubt about a particularly sticky issue do you need to investigate further. As an example, I needed only to draw on my own life experiences and my observations of others around me to know that love does not work, and never can work, to negate malice or sorrow. This is why I wrote my journal in the style I did, including many examples of my life experiences and my inevitable failures to find peace and happiness, both in the real world and the spiritual world.

GARY: The only person I really talk to about these matters are people on this list and my partner. I have from time to time read her a little bit out of the book. I have read her a little bit from your Journal at times. Then we have discussed the issues presented in the writing and commented on it from our own experience. I rather like doing this and have learned a few things about her in the process. Given that I am practising actualism myself, I suppose I carry that into the marketplace in a sense, but I do not proselytize (how could I?) nor do I really talk to anybody about it. I would, given the opportunity, but I am careful about this sort of thing. I recently talked privately to a couple of people who had written to me from a mailing list that I recently subscribed to. The response or lack of a response I got from them was an indication to me of the radicalness of actualism and the reluctance of people to question their cherished beliefs and assumptions. When someone is not willing to question their beliefs, thoughts and emotions, inquiry is dead in the water before it even starts to float. (...)

*

PETER: The next fear I encountered was the fear associated when actively dismantling my social identity. The fear was that if I no longer believed what everyone else believed, if I no longer valued society’s morals and ethics, if I no longer thought and felt how I had been taught to think and feel, then I would certainly be punished and ostracized. What I soon came to realize was that the moment I stopped trying to change other people by pointing out where their beliefs were wrong, no longer did I provoke defensive or offensive responses from others – no longer did I feel punished or ostracized. This also meant that increasingly I had little in common with my friends because I no longer shared their beliefs and also I no longer empathized with their misery and I no longer supported their malice towards others. Very quickly my former friendships mutually dissolved, as there was no longer any emotional bond or need for support on my part. As my social identity dissolved so did my fears of the dire consequences of punishment and ostracization.

GARY: I have not had any ‘friends’ for such a long time now. I always have been quite a loner. It used to bother me that I did not have many friends – a voice kept playing in my head telling me that this was not ‘normal’ and I ‘should’ have more friends, even though I did not want any. I have found the whole process of ‘making friends’ and ‘keeping friends’ so wearying that I am glad to have dispelled with the whole process. It is not that I am anti-social. While still a loner, I do enjoy the company of other people and I get the feeling that they enjoy mine. I go out socially from time to time. There is no one I feel I dislike. But I don’t go out of my way to ‘make friends’. At a social gathering, if my partner is with me, I mostly stay with her. In a larger social situation, I feel content to mix with people not in my immediate group, or try to get to know new people. It is so nice to talk to people and not to feel held down by allegiance to certain selected ‘friends’, cliques, or subgroups. In a social situation at work, I like to mix with people not in my immediate work group. I like to ‘cross the lines’ in other words. Growing up, I remember being terrified of people – I would actually flee the house when friends of the family or other adults came over, so I suppose most of my isolative, loner-like tendencies are hold overs from growing up. I am still aware that there is that fear of people and fear of strangers underlying my social interactions with others. After all, most people are socialized to be afraid of ‘strangers’ – I seem to recall running across that in the actualism literature somewhere- although the paradox is that most people are the most hurt and traumatized by the people they are closest to. I find it interesting sometimes to just observe people and be open to what is happening in social situations.

Sometimes when in a restaurant, I like (if I am feeling in a particularly receptive mood) to sit across from someone else who is by themselves and just be aware of their presence.

Not spying on them mind you, but just be aware of them sitting there as they are undoubtedly aware of me sitting there. There may be a glance, a smile, etc, or there may not be. The old Gary would seclude himself from interaction and nurture his fears of others to the point of being a recluse. The process of actualism is not a process of isolation from others – it is a process of becoming fully engaged in the wondrous experience of being alive in the present moment. It is a process of learning how to live in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. It is an active investigation of these fears that hold one back from enjoying, indeed delighting, in the present moment.

PETER: There is also an atavistic component to this fear. Atavistic fears are those that are passed on over countless generations either as spoken or unspoken taboos that hint at horrific consequences should one dare to stray too far from the accepted norm. Many of these relate to retribution and revenge by the Gods and spirits or horrendous acts of torture wrought by the shamans and priests for heretics and those possessed by evil spirits. Often these fears would occur in dreams at night-time or when stirring the wrath of some God-man on a mailing list. Provided you keep your wits about you and don’t goad a fanatic, investigating these fears can be great fun because these fears are eventually seen to consist of the same pithless wind as the shamans and God-men themselves.

GARY: I am enjoying engaging people more around the issues that concern me. I am ‘sticking my neck out’ more and I am exercising my mind, flexing my brain muscles. I am actually enjoying challenging some people on things that they are saying, particularly when these make little or no sense to me. I used to not have much stomach for this kind of thing – I think I lacked confidence. But now I am gaining confidence, and with it I am gaining the ability to speak my mind plainly without fear of the consequences. Sometimes I ask myself ‘What do I have to lose?’, and the answer that comes back is – nothing. Please note that I am not talking about goading or bullying people, but it does involve active engagement of the other in the process of inquiry into the items of interest. This can be done with anyone. Often people don’t like questions – I have been told that I ask too many questions. But questioning is the essence of inquiry.

PETER: The human social identity is rooted in comparison to others – we are taught by reward and punishment to conform to society’s standards – to be ‘good like Johnny or Betty’, ‘not to be bad like Tom or Sally’. As children our performance and behaviour is constantly ranked and rated at home and school in comparison to others as we are imbibed with a social conscience. Conformity and mediocrity become our role models and we have only two choices – either to humbly acquiesce or blindly rebel.

Humanity rewards conformity and punishes rebellion, giving rise to endless cycles of endemic necessary suffering and senseless necessary struggle. The only way out of this mess is to become autonomous – to break free of the shackles that continually hobble us to comparing ourselves to others who are similarly afflicted by the human condition. I found the only way to do this was to do it – thinking about it, worrying about it, or fearing the consequences of freedom only wasted even more time.

GARY: Had I not been so keen to compare myself with others, I doubt the situation at work would have as seriously upset my equilibrium as it did. In any event, one’s ‘equilibrium’ is extremely precarious: most people seem to react rather violently to even minor changes in their circumstances. The whole recent situation at work got me in touch with my fear of failure, and I even felt that I had failed at actualism. I don’t think I have expressed this before, but I have feared that I was a failure at that which I am most interested in – peace and harmony with those around me. I also think in some respects I am afraid to practice actualism because I am afraid I will end up bereft of companionship, home, sanity, income, and comfort. I think very subtly I have had the attitude: ‘So, this is what it all has gotten you – now you’ve lost your job and embarrassed yourself – see what you get!’ Sometimes it gets so scary I wish I could turn tail and run back to the ‘safety’ of the Human Condition. Actually, thinking about it, I suppose I could if I really wanted.

So, Peter, I think I am finding the doing part very difficult. I seem to be spinning my wheels a lot fearing the consequences.

PETER: The only way to dispel comparison on the path to Actual Freedom is to do the best you can do. If this best is free of malice and sorrow, if this best is done with integrity, then whatever is done is simply the best in the circumstances. It is a bit weird when you get to the stage when you lose this ‘self’-measure of comparison with others for I find I now have no standard other than my own integrity. Believing in society’s hypocritical goods and bads, opinionated rights and wrongs, yearning for praise and cowering before criticism all gradually disappear and then it is as if there is nothing to hold on to – no external reference for ‘me’ in comparison to others. This stage can be unnerving and daunting and it is mightily reassuring that the sun comes up every morning, no matter what was going on in my head or my heart.

GARY: In some respects I feel I am now doing the best I can under the circumstances. I said a couple malicious things when I was under the gun but it could have been worse. I am going in to where I worked this afternoon for an ‘exit interview’ and I am keenly aware of not wanting to bad-mouth anyone and leave on the best terms possible. This was not true over the weekend when I got myself in a worked-up state, resentfully focusing on getting ‘revenge’ by maligning my supervisor’s handling of the situation. As I told you before once, I have always had a terrific resentment of authority figures and it has dogged me my entire life. If there is anything good to come out of this situation, it is to screw up my determination and intent to rid myself of this destructive feeling, as well as the other feelings.

PETER: What I have come to see in my writing is that my experience is typical to all, in that I am a flesh and blood human being born into the human condition exactly like everyone else, and therefore my experience in becoming free of the human condition will be relevant to all. The usefulness of our conversations is that we on this list are the very first to be taking the direct route to an actual freedom from the human condition. The usefulness of anyone interested in writing about their own process is that a breadth of experiences will be recorded and made freely available on the web-site for anyone who is interested – for those who are doing it now and for those who will inevitably follow.

GARY: Yes, I think I can see that my behaviour, which I am prone to severely castigate myself for, was little different than most people in a similar situation. When one’s ass is on the line, one can see many people kick into instinctually malicious, fearful, or aggressive behaviours. I think I am little different in this respect. Continued practice of actualism probably resulted in a situation where I was able to stand up for myself and assert my autonomy rather than remaining miserable and bringing my job home with me. Sometimes the best thing you can do is cut your losses, chalk it all up, and move on to something new. Often when I work on posts such as this, I can feel the fresh flush of excitement to be on the leading edge of something of monumental importance to the human species. It is something entirely new, and we are the ones who are actually doing it right now. Although I may occasionally stumble and fall on the way, each of these ‘setbacks’ is pregnant with information about ‘me’ and presents the opportunity to see for myself just what we are talking about when we talk about the Human Condition. 22.1.2001

PETER: Having been full-on on the spiritual path for 17 years I had a few friends who either were either left limping along as church-going spiritualists or were still shopping in the spiritual supermarket. I naively thought they would be interested in actualism but the moment they realized it involved questioning their spiritual beliefs, their automatic self-defence mechanism cut in and when they realized it also involved effort and work it was way too much for their spiritual ego. I just refused to let this experience muzzle me, which is why I chose to write about my experiences rather than try and change other people.

GARY: I had a lively back-and-forth with some people about love and compassion recently. It provided an opportunity for me to investigate my own beliefs and feelings about love and compassion, as well as to determine how other people think about it. What I found was that I became rather exasperated or frustrated that either I couldn’t express what I was trying to say or that people didn’t want to hear what I was trying to say. This feeling of exasperation was a red flag to me that I was dealing with my own beliefs and feelings.

There is absolutely no reason why one ought to become frustrated or irritated about what someone else is saying unless it challenges or threatens some belief that they hold dear. And I think this is what was happening to me in the course of this correspondence.

I was trying to influence others, and when their opposition to what I was saying became even more determined (naturally so), I felt misunderstood and frustrated. I then commenced to ask myself why I was trying to influence others, questioned myself on my stake in the discussion, and investigated into my own deeper fears, conflicts, and doubts about love and compassion. Because I was deliberately questioning the emotion of love, and I was getting determined opposition from others, it really highlighted for me just how highly love is sought, coveted and valued by human beings. Love and compassion (and their allied emotions: pity, sympathy, empathy, etc) are really regarded to be the pinnacle, indeed the summit of all earthly dreams and hopes. To reject love is to be dead, according to what I heard these other people to be saying. Since I have begun to investigate into these tender instincts, I have been able to see what a hold they have on Humanity, indeed what a hold they have on ‘me’. ‘I’ need love in order to confirm my existence. Without love, ‘I’ am nothing – I might as well be dead.

Love, if I was following the thread of these conversations, is the do-all and end-all of earthly existence. Without it, life has no meaning, no reason. So, even though I was taking one side in the discussions, the discussions themselves were reflecting back to me the deep questions and doubts that I myself have on the topic in question. It reminded me of the work situation that I was in and the allegation against me that I had ‘no compassion’. I found this somewhat disturbing, but probably only because I myself regard ‘compassion’ as essential to ‘me’, and that without it, I must be a total outcast. So I think the discussion with others about the quality of love and compassion was helpful to me in the following ways: it helped me to uncover some deeper feelings and beliefs that were lurking behind my outright denial of love and compassion; it further helped me to see that I was trying to use influence to persuade others of the ‘rightness’ of my arguments, which I would only do if they represented beliefs to me and not actualities.

*

PETER: What I discovered about my friendships was that the moment ‘I’ stopped maintaining them and cultivating them for my own self-ish purposes that the friend would also stop contacting me and the friend-ship would eventually sink because it needed two people, both constantly rowing, to keep it afloat.

GARY: It has been my experience that ‘I’ need special friends for the validation and confirmation they give of ‘my’ existence. I am not a misanthrope. Neither am I a hermit.

I enjoy the company of other people, I enjoy talking to many different kinds of people, and I enjoy going out socially from time to time but I do not keep any ‘friends’ at the present time. I think my questioning of relationships of this sort really began with the suicide of my ‘best’ friend in 1989. It was a terrible shock, and the emotions which it engendered in me were not very pleasant. After that, I began to be much more selective in terms of having friends, but also I began pulling away from these kinds of exclusive relationships. I began to see that a ‘friendship’ in a way is a special kind of ‘love’ relationship, and in my experience at least, involves a considerable amount of dependency, possessiveness, jealousy, envy, guilt, etc. I think you are right that people are engaged in living their friends’ lives and not their own. I have wondered if perhaps I were trying to insulate myself emotionally from the pain of being attached and related to someone in a close relationship and I think I am. I find the sticky mess of friendship too much to endure, and I neither want to experience the painful emotions related to having a friend nor the positive emotions of love and affection for another. Probably that makes me an ‘emotional cripple’ in some people’s eyes, but that has been my experience.

PETER: I simply gave up talking to people face to face about Actual Freedom and reverted to occasionally dropping in a bit of common sense into a conversation – a much less confronting exercise, although even this does appear to stir up some issues in some people. I tried writing on a few spiritual mailing lists and was cyber-executed from one and censored off another, so I do my writing on the AF mailing list now, but as you will have noticed even this list has now attracted a few perfervid objectors to peace on earth.

GARY: Hmm ... interesting. I was not aware that you do not write to other lists anymore. What I found in my brief experience of writing to others recently was that, yes, it did seem to be stirring up some issues in others, but it was stirring up the same issues in me. I found it was a fascinating way of observing my own psyche in action, and to sharpen my own thinking about some things. I think in the future I am going to be a little more circumspect in what I say to others. I have noticed that when I involve myself in groups, cyber or otherwise, I tend to come in guns a-blazing. Perhaps for me this is some kind of defence mechanism in action – you know, the best defence is a good offence. I have sometimes jumped right into these things and offended other people, rather than trying to ease in gradually and observing etiquette (or nettiquette). 4.2.2001

PETER: This business of becoming free of the human condition already feels tough enough at times but to beat yourself up for not succeeding simply means yet another moment of potential happiness and harmlessness has been squandered in ‘self’-indulgence. And again, this is not denial, because the next real thing to investigate, the next real issue to investigate, will come swanning in by itself. In the market place, unlike the Monastery, Sangha or ‘inner’ cave, there is an ample supply of normal events and normal people to test one’s happiness and harmlessness.

GARY: Indeed. And this is one of the chief differences between actualism and spirituality’s ‘How to be in the world but not of it’, because in actualism there is no need for any allegiance to an exclusive group or clique, no identification of oneself being a member of any particular identifying belief system. One is free to be with people as-they-are, whatever their particular beliefs or religiosity or lack of religiosity. It seemed that when I was involved with a spiritual lifestyle, I was always looking for people who were friendly to my particular belief system, and I would befriend people based on whether or not their beliefs conformed to mine. In actualism, there is none of that, and one is free to have an actual intimacy with all people, regardless of where they are coming from. This is, as I think about it just now, one of the fundamental differences between actualism and so-called spiritual belief. As a spiritual believer, ‘I’ am dependent on the spiritual or the religious group for a continual reinforcement of my identity as a spiritual being or as a member of a spiritual community, and I seek this affiliation constantly as this reaffirms and supports ‘my’ existence. In actualism, one has to go it completely and totally alone, alone in the sense of depending on nothing else but one’s own common sense and intelligence as well as one’s own pure consciousness experiences as one’s guide.

PETER: Actualism is not about avoiding, withdrawing, hiding or suppressing. Actualism is not about becoming a hermit or a monk or a nun. Unless one is fully engaged in the world, unless one is fully prepared to investigate all of the major issues that prevent an actual intimacy with one’s fellow human beings, fundamental change is impossible.

GARY: There are different levels of engagement with the world around you. Some people are very engaged, socially and politically. Some individuals are very engaged in civic activities, for instance. I am not. To people who lead more socially oriented lives, I would probably look somewhat like a hermit. But the critical thing is that I am not avoiding these things because I am afraid of them, simply because I prefer not to do these things. I have very much experienced the impetus to take on an activity because I would ordinarily avoid it. I think one needs to face and eliminate fears. And one cannot eliminate a fear if one is avoiding the object of the fear. By actually taking on the very thing that one is afraid of, one has an excellent opportunity to fully investigate whatever issue is preventing an intimacy with one’s fellows. To some extent, this very sort of thing occurred during my job search. I found myself charging into some career areas that ordinarily I would avoid because I have the interest and desire to find out what I have been avoiding. A confidence develops that one can eliminate fears in this way, by probing, questioning, and challenging oneself to go further all the time. 24.2.2001

GARY: One can, through investigating and experiencing the instincts in oneself, see them more clearly in other people. I had talked at a previous time of changing my scope of practice as a social worker – I got a job in a treatment program for children. I had never worked with children before and, for me, it was a daunting prospect because being with children always seemed to trigger me to re-experience the anguish, anger, resentment and hurts tied up in my own painful childhood. Despite years of insight-based therapy, I was still subject to bouts of convulsive crying, deep sorrow and debilitating depression at times.

It was heart-rending to go through these painful emotions and they made little sense to me. I had been told by supervisors that I ought to work with children, that it would be good experience, etc. Yet I was afraid to do this and I gradually began to want to be free from this fear. So, after I quit my last job, I went out and got a job working with children.

My current supervisor told me that she thinks I am a ‘natural’ at it. Since practicing actualism, I think there has been a progressive shrinkage in the emotional-memory part of my psyche and brain perhaps, whereas I do not experience the types of fears, angers, etc that I used to. My intelligence and common sense is free to make sense of the interactions with people around me. Working with children is a most satisfying and engaging way of getting an inside and intimate look at the Human Condition in action. It is rather an ‘eye-opener’ and one realizes that one is yet a part of this vast enterprise known as society and culture and that all ‘I’ have to offer is yet again the same tried and failed techniques that keep the instincts under control and keep us from going off the rails.

PETER: But I am in no way advocating retiring from the world of people, things and events into a do-nothing state of isolationism. For an actualist the market place is the best and most fertile testing ground for exploration – there is nothing like the boss at work, one’s partner, one’s parents or children, one’s friends, the TV news, the neighbours, etc. to bring to the surface the beliefs, morals, values, viewpoints and ethics that initially stand in the way of becoming happy and harmless.

GARY: Yes, I am relating in an improved way to people at work, i.e. where I spend the most amount of my waking time. I am open to new ways of doing things and not being so darned ... stubborn, in a word. At least at the job, I realized that I had zilch experience working in this area and was open to imbibing what others had learned and had to teach me. It must be that way with actualism as far as I am concerned. There are people on this list with far, far more experience than I (you for one) and I want to learn what it is that you have to convey. 3.8.2001

GARY: Hello Peter...

Something you wrote seemed right on – it was the following:

PETER: What I did was a lot of experiencing of, and thinking about, grief and one of the most striking aspects I clearly remember was how much this emotion was a part of my identity.

GARY: This accords with my own recent bout of morbidness. I realized on some level, at least, that the grief was part and parcel of ‘my’ very identity – it is a large part of who I think ‘Gary’ is. It is a very old, familiar emotion that heralds to the early years of life, and perhaps goes back a good deal further. It is tied up with my mother’s tragic illness and subsequent devastating disability, the sadness and grief of a small child, along with all the sympathy and well-meaning endeavours of a number of relatives and close family friends, later worn as a kind of badge of honour and used to justify the most malicious actions, and by the age of 7, I am sure, became a very part of my personality and modus operandi in the world.

To experience this grief again, unhindered by the social identity with its conceptions of what is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, and to be able to see the effect that this emotional state had on my close, live-in partner, along with its unspoken demand for attention, nurturance, as well as the imposition of my moods and emotions on another, and the hurt that this caused in her, was a revealing glimpse at ‘me’ – the passionate identity – going full blast.

It did not do to tell myself that I ‘should not’ feel this way, or be this way. No, it took much longer to sort it all out, but also to make the shift to a sensuous awareness of the feeling and emotion and what it felt like, as well as a forfeiture of the claim of uniqueness – that this grief was ‘my’ own, but rather, looking at it as human grief and sadness, and the effect that this emotion is having on this present-day world of people in their inter-connectedness. As the shift came and happened, it seemed to be a short hop, skip, and jump to pulling myself up by my bootstraps and determining to pull myself out of the welter of sad emotions and get on with the business of living my life to the best of my ability – happy and harmless again. It was not a wrenching experience, which would imply a kind of suppression or repression, but it was a shift easily made when I realized the futility of remaining a sorrowful and suffering person.

GARY: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to. In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed.

PETER: During the first two years of practicing actualism I also experienced that my ‘friendships’ dropped away but lately I have had occasion to meet several of these former ‘friends’ and to do work for several members of the spiritual group I was in before. All of these meetings have been delightful as am now meeting fellow human beings, I am interested in them as fellow human beings and, as such, have enjoyed their company. The difference between now and before is that I now make no emotional demands of people I meet which then frees them of the burden of ‘me’, nor do I have emotional expectations of them which then frees me from the constant need to intuit and imagine what they were thinking and feeling about ‘me’.

GARY: I have never been a ‘people person’ the way I see some people operate. In the past, when I had friendships, I had maybe only one or two very close friends, or an intimate partner, and I pretty much placed a great deal of demands on those relationships and was devastated when they ended. Of course, my emotional demands were usually what resulted in the relationship ending, and this was particularly true of ‘love’ relationships. I have had to examine what ‘my’ emotional needs are, wherein they consist, and how I can best conduct myself in relating to other human beings, including my current partner.

It is not simply a matter of finding an ‘appropriate’ form of conduct, it is a process of digging into my very core to uncover the feelings and emotions that create havoc in living with others. I have found that ‘I’, as an instinctual entity, am incredibly greedy and self-centred. ‘I’ place almost constant demands on others for support, succourance, and attention, and I am most disconcerted when these are spurned. ‘I’ also am extremely controlling, issuing a string of the most minute directions as to how others should conduct their lives in relation to ‘me’. Because the instinctual entity inhabiting this body is essentially a sorrowful and malicious entity, ‘I’ inflict this sorrow and malice on others around me, either in corporate existence with others in society or in a close co-habitational living arrangement with an ‘intimate’ partner. The only way I can see to get around this is to get out of it completely: to self-immolate.

PETER: There is great significance in the phrase ‘fellow human beings’ because the only way you can begin to treat your fellow human beings as fellow human beings is to firstly demolish your own social identity. The first component that has to go is one’s spiritual identity because a Christian never meets a Buddhist as a fellow human being, a Rajneeshee never meets a Krishnamurti-ite as a fellow human being, and so on, because each have different beliefs, that make for differing identities. The very best that spiritualists can muster up is a feeling of oneness – a feeling that always fails to translate into a practical and tangible peace and harmony between members of a spiritual group, let alone between members of competing groups.

GARY: Yes. I have found that palpable evidence of the demolishment of the social identity is a relative absence of what I will, for lack of a better term, call the ‘inner critic’. There used to be an ‘inner critic’ who was a rather noisy chap in the head who would almost immediately categorize others according to their racial, ethnic, class, weight, size, etc.

Whilst I am still aware of this critical voice in the head, the corresponding feelings that arise in the heart are much more open to examination. And I realize that it is this tendency to lock on to others with particular emotional reactions to their ‘different-ness’ that in large part complicates interacting with others in the social environment. I am also aware of how, in my spritual days, I use to swan along in a blissful, rose-colored glasses phase of feeling ‘we are all one’ or ‘we are all God’s children’. This sticky, gooey state of denial seemed at the time to be a solution to the condition of separation, divisiveness, and conflict that human beings find themselves in, but it was gained at the price of completely losing touch with the underlying reasons for so much strife in the world, and it was only a temporary ‘feel-good’ solution, as I witnessed the same conflict and strife in the microcosm of the religious group that I belonged to that happened in the world at large. It was this obvious inability to live in peace and harmony within the religious group that pulled the rose-colored glasses off my eyes and hastened my abandonment of the spiritual way of life. As long one is identifying with any particular group or sect, living in peace and harmony with others is an impossibility.

*

PETER: To take your questions one at a time –

GARY:

• What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings?

PETER: If you are part of the human condition then ‘you’, as an alien-feeling psychological and psychic entity, need to relate to similar alien-feeling entities, otherwise you feel even more desperately lonely and alien. As you are discovering, the nature of this relating can only be emotive – ‘it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling.’

GARY:

• If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then?

PETER: As you actively diminish and wither both your social ‘self’ and your instinctual ‘self’ – your personality and being, or your ego and soul if you like – there is less ‘I’ and ‘me’ remaining to think and feel ‘he or ‘she’ needs or desires a relationship with other ‘he’s or ‘she’s. I am not being clever here, because if you set off on a moral or ethical course of not needing or not desiring relationships with other people – take it on as a shouldn’t – you can only end up feeling an outcast or alien or becoming a hermit and a celibate. If you do so, history shows that the emotional void that is created by this act of withdrawal will commonly be filled by the ‘discovery of a greater love and meaning – a God, by whatever name.

GARY: This is a very important couple of paragraphs right here. When you are talking about deliberately moving closer, deliberately becoming more intimate, I assume you are talking about ‘intimate’ as actual intimacy rather than as real world intimacy. In actual intimacy, the noisy chap in the head, the ‘inner critic’ if you will, has been effectively stilled, and what is left is a clear-eyed sensate perception and a roving, active intelligence that can immediately grasp the significance of a situation. This flesh-and-blood body can easily relate to other flesh-and-blood bodies in the social environment, but as soon as this body begins to relate to others in terms of a spurious real-world intimacy based on searching for commonalities, identification with a particular quirk or different-ness, then sub-grouping develops, a kind of us vs. them mentality shows up, and suddenly living in peace and harmony becomes incredibly difficult, an ideal more than a reality.

At this point, I would say that I am not taking it on as a ‘should’ that I do not need or want relationships. To me it is a dare. I am daring to be free of all of the group identifications that are formed on so many levels, I am daring to extricate myself from these various group affiliations, and at times it has been an extremely daunting, lonely business. Particularly when I have realized that there is no God up there pulling the strings or who I can go to in times of prayer for support. To me it feels like a very dangerous course to be on because I have the sense that I am ending ‘Gary’, that ‘Gary’ has been none other than an emotional, instinctual being who has formed these various affiliations and identifications. If this is recognized the moment that it occurs by attentiveness to what is happening at the moment, it is in effect pulling the plug on ‘me’, and through the repeated action of this pulling of the plug on ‘me’ self-immolation is hastened.

*

GARY:

• Are relationships important? Why?

PETER: Relationships are vitally important for an actualist for they hold the key to becoming aware of, exploring and incrementally removing the obstacles that inhibit an actual intimacy from one’s fellow human beings. Spiritualists always put relationships with their God, or their Self, first and relationships with their fellow human beings second – but for an actualist the exact opposite is the case.

VINEETO: In other words, in a relationship one social and instinctual identity attempts to relate to the other’s social and instinctual identity and both parties are mutually dependent on the other for maintaining their identity, negotiating their individuality and battling their loneliness because a human being only has an identity in relation to other people. A personality is only better than or lesser than, more needy or less needy, stronger or weaker in relation to – i.e. relative to – other personalities. You are hundred percent spot on when you say that ‘the entire package’, both the good and the bad emotions in a relationship, ‘needs to be deleted’.

RESPONDENT No. 27: ‘I personally like ‘second-best’ or ‘second-rate.’ It lets you know that it doesn’t measure up to what’s possible, yet it doesn’t polarize into ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ I hadn’t thought of the word ‘fully’ as polarizing into ‘fully’ and ‘empty’ but I suppose one could read it that way. I was rather thinking of actual freedom as being ‘fully’ living and ‘normal’ human life as ‘not so fully,’ living but certainly not ‘empty.’

GARY: I am not sure I understand your exact concern with polarizing language. While I agree with you about use of the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and even some degree with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, as they seem to have a strong moral, evaluative component, I do not necessarily agree that language accurately descriptive of the strong contrast between life in the ‘real’ world and life in the ‘actual’ world, language which is bound to be somewhat polarizing, is to be avoided. Incidentally, I think the use of the term ‘pathetic’ is a particularly apt term. But since you addressed those comments directly to Richard in a post-script to him, I will leave that aside for the moment. It will be interesting to see what he has to say about it.

I sort of get the impression that you are interested in watering down the differences between an Actual Freedom from the Human Condition (something which I only have first-hand knowledge of through PCEs) and ‘normal’ human life. Given that there is such an enormous, qualitative difference between the ‘self’-less experience of actuality in the PCE and ‘normal’ life with its usual cares and woes, isn’t language describing this contrast bound to be a bit polarizing in any event? Besides, what is ‘wrong’ with polarizing language if it accurately describes the extremity between two radically different states?

Perhaps this is just a matter of opinion, but I have always thought that the broad panoramic description of ‘normal’ human life and the Human Condition as exemplified in the Actual Freedom writings and website is an accurate depiction of the perils, pitfalls, and pleasures of being a ‘normal’ human being. Naturally this description is not necessarily going to appeal to everyone who encounters it. The stark reality of murder, torture, rape, and warfare – in other words, the ‘worst’ fruits that humankind produces – and the reminder that periodically crops up on this list that these depravities are all too common for human beings – this is bound to be a turn-off to those who prefer to wear rose-colored glasses whilst going through life.

And, at the cost of seeming like I am nit-picking, aren’t you yourself ‘polarizing’ when you say state the following: ‘I do think it’s in the Actual Freedom Trust’s best interest to steer clear from ‘polarizing’ language when entering into dialogue with the rest of the ‘human’ race.’ Aren’t you creating a separation between those who make up the Actual Freedom Trust and ‘the rest of the ‘human’ race’. Given your concern about polarizing language, you certainly seem to be polarizing yourself because there seems to be an embedded assumption that those who make up the Trust are outside of the human race, rather than ‘fellow human beings’. I don’t think that this is quite accurate. Is not everyone who participates on this list, members of the Trust and not, part of the human race? Just a few thoughts... 16.8.2002

RESPONDENT No. 46 (P/V): It seems to me that the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ breaks the inward circle of feelings and emotions, and bring the attention not inward but outward to the senses. Can you describe precisely what happened when you experienced a clearing of an emotion or a feeling in using the method, I want to have a very precise description step by step, if possible, to understand how to use the method.

GARY: There is a very precise description of the method contained on the Actual Freedom website at the following address: ../actualism/path1.htm . It hardly seems necessary to go into the specifics to a greater extent or to re-invent the wheel. But suffice it to say that the essence of the method is to thoroughly examine and investigate everything that gets in the way of being happy and harmless. This includes every affective experience, emotion, feeling, and belief.

Just to give an example: in the morning I was on the way to work and my partner, in saying ‘goodbye’ to me, stated ‘I love you’ and lightly caressed my hand. In response to this lightly spoken endearment, I experienced a feeling of sadness mingled with regret. The feeling hit me between the eyes, so to speak, and I was interested to look into that feeling and see what I could find out about it, as it would reveal much about ‘me’. One of the things that I came up with was the realization that love in any form is always accompanied by sorrow and sadness, as for instance when love is lost. I think I also experienced a momentary feeling of pity for my partner whose expressions of ‘love’ to me are usually not reciprocated, perhaps in they are in tender expressions of caring but certainly not in word, as I never speak the ‘love’ word anymore. I think there was an irrational belief operating in me at the time that went something like this: ‘What kind of partner are you after all – you should be telling your partner that you love her’. One could easily substitute any number of words in the place of ‘partner’ such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘friend’, ‘co-worker’, etc. The irrational belief that I ‘should’ be expressing love to these people caused me to feel momentary sadness, regret, and guilt.

I have, since I started using the Actualism method, been most interested in examining my attachments to others. I use the word ‘attachment’ as being somewhat synonymous with ‘relationship’ as it is commonly used. By this I mean an emotional connection of some sort or other. It is always an emotional issue of some sort or other that binds me to another person or group of people. It of course starts in the dependent relationship of the mother and infant, is nurtured during the long period of childhood, and may grow into more stable ‘attachments’ in adolescence and adulthood. I think that one of the effects of practicing the Actualism method has been a great loosening and weakening of emotional attachments of any kind for me. I experience at times feelings of dread and angst that I am not ‘normal’ in the sense of wanting to attach myself to other people emotionally.

I seem to have no drive to form friendships in the conventional sense or to identify with other people on the usual levels. I have found it most interesting and fruitful to examine my emotional attachments to others, which all involve clinging, fear, loneliness, desire, dependency, and domination in one way or another. In short, by examining my attachments to others, I feel I have hit upon something very intrinsic to the Human Condition: those emotional ties that bind me to humanity. Loosening and eventually eliminating those ties completely is my aim but it is a most daunting course. Because in so-doing I am turning my back on those things that once gave me comfort, and am liable to experience pangs of anxious apartness, even the dread occasioned by losing large parts of my identity.

Just a quick note: when I say in the sentence above that I am ‘turning my back on those things that once gave me comfort’ I am referring not so much to deliberate repression or suppression of an experience, but as with this as well a process of finding out experientially what binds me to the Human Condition. For instance, I have found that it is not necessary for me to have ‘friends’ in the usual sense in order to be happy and harmless – quite the opposite – I have found that maintaining this system of alliances and affiliations most definitely gives sustenance to and fuels ‘me’.

RESPONDENT No. 46 (P/V): About the term individual, it’s not for me an exception, an outstanding person as an hero or something like that. An individual is some-body, as Gary and I are, nothing special. And it’s a fact that evolution uses these individuals having nothing special to continue its movement. The species is only determined by its genetic potential, the compatibility of the individuals of a species have in common, makes them possible to breed, that’s all.

GARY: Compatibility of breeding stock is often a matter of similar racial, ethnic, and national origin, but certainly is not necessary for people to be compatible in order to procreate.

Marriage and procreation across racial lines is still somewhat of an unusual thing, whereas it is common to marry across ethnic lines. Perhaps you were referring to the fact that humans breed with humans, not non-humans (?)

RESPONDENT No. 46 (P/V): I see in the Webster dictionary that effectively an individual is defined as a single human contrasted with a social group or institution. But that’s not the meaning I have in mind, for me it’s only somebody having nothing in special (not a genius, an outstanding personality, a guru, a leader, a strong character, etc). Perhaps in French the meaning of ‘individu’ is not exactly the same as in English, being more a ‘quidam’ than somebody exceptional. So I am not searching special gurus on your site, only a sort of scientific and proved reproducible method by any individual willing to try it, a method that works I can apply on myself and share with others if I find it useful to be happy, to discover things I ignore about myself. That’s enough for me.

GARY: By the definition you are using of an individual as ‘nothing special’, I may fit the bill.

However, in your original post, I think the controversy was about your statements which made it sound to me like the individual is always stands in opposition to society in which he or she lives. My point was only that even extraordinary geniuses are a product of their society, even if they are way ahead of their times, they still have incorporated often the cherished ideals of whatever society they are living in. The person who has truly eliminated malice and sorrow and is living a happy and harmless life would, I think, not be considered a danger because this person, by any definition, would be totally harmless and written off as a complete lunatic. 4.10.2002

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