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Others ~ Selected Correspondence Social Identity
The social identity stuff I discovered yesterday is an amazing stuff. When I ran Richard’s question ‘Can we emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable’ it lead me to the guardian angel at the gate with chemical weapons – which uses these painful emotions to punish one for doing/ having done/ will do behaviour – much like the police but acting internally (and the punishment is always feeling bad, fearful etc. – iow feeling unhappy). Probably I learnt to do this in my childhood – I am always controlling myself with the shoulds and nots – though a lot of the values I picked up later and seem to be not so run of the mill – albeit working on general principles of wanting to be ‘an ideal member of the society’. What a relief not be doing so – having a clear intent to be happy and harmless, it is now possible to live without controlling oneself – I am not talking about expressing, but about ‘not repressing/ suppressing’. I used to think that I didn’t have beliefs and values and controls – that I am a rational person who arrives at conclusions out of reasoning – but I discovered that I do have beliefs and values when I control my internal behaviour (I couldn’t discover them by simply asking ‘what is my belief’ – the inquiry into why I am feeling bad uncovered it). I feel bad for various things I think and feel. Without all these controls, I am free to feel/think without unduly controlling and punishing myself (even anticipatorily)… and I can apply common sense to clear away stupidities… the punishing pattern only sustains the underlying tendencies never ending it (compare it with the crime and police) – the Krishnamurti saying that this is so because ‘the controller is controlled’ rings bells somewhat – but isn’t deep enough to provide an understanding of the whole process. Though much has been written about the social identity and why it is important to focus on this aspect (rather than going to instinctual passions at the beginning of the investigation), I should admit that I really didn’t understand this at all (as it can be said that I was in denial/ignorance/unclear that I indeed was made up of these values and feelings) – it seems to be a great breakthrough having found this. That ‘social identity’ is overlaid on the ‘rudimentary self’ etc. makes sense only now. This seems to be a crucial step to me. I should ask those who are doing this kind of investigation whether they have found such a clear sense of identity (a heavily feeling being) which acts as the controller and shapes our thinking, feeling and hence (?) behaviour. In my assessment (too early – L ) I should think that the steps after this identification (and elimination – in my case identification easily led to seeing the silliness of having such an enforcer as common sense is a much better benevolent mechanism to conduct one’s business) are quite straightforward; and as to having the intent to be harmless and happy – that itself seems to be a straightforward application of common sense. But once again I clearly acknowledge that the adventure would not have been possible without the map – required reading and understanding so much of the material – once again great thanks to Richard, Peter, Vineeto and the rest (I cannot thank enough) – because if not for the writings here, it is easy to justify and sustain the social identity (the necessity of the values, beliefs, controls and so on) that is oneself – after all one will be in a good (in number L) company – in not questioning it let alone ending it in oneself. No 33
For the longest time, I had a great problem with questioning love. I seriously considered going Sufi because I couldn’t bear the thought of living without love, of having a life without love; it was the absolute for me, I guess you could say. At the root of my desire for love was the persistent, erroneous belief to which I was clinging- ‘I have to have love/be in love to be happy.’ I eradicated this belief by realizing that it was, after all, a belief, and I thought about how much more interesting life had been since I began the breakdown of my social identity. Funny that the list should currently be mentioning synchronicity because that’s exactly what seemed to happen when I gave up my belief- suddenly a potential boyfriend came into my life. The great thing about his sudden appearance is that it gave me a first-hand opportunity to watch how love functioned inside of me. Okay, so I learned REALLY fast the negative side of love- the sense of longing for the person when they weren’t present, the disappointment after sexual contact, the jealousy and worry over their whereabouts, the dependency, the fear that the other party would perhaps commit adultery- and so, too, I quickly decided that I wasn’t going to deal with this love thing any longer. I find it humorous that Richard referred to love as a ‘holy cow’ (or something similar) at some point when describing his experiences during the period where he was ‘enlightened.’ Then again, that description is pretty accurate. Something interesting that I recalled today was that long ago, I had realized that ‘love’ was somehow based in the instincts, especially romantic love. That is, I understood that ‘love’ was intimately related to the human sex drive, and that the driving force beneath all those sugary-sweet words was to fuck (no sense in sugar coating the word at this point, either; in fact, making the point in crude language further emphasizes the falsehoods of love). So in other words, love is about some sort of trade-off, ‘I’ll be nice and sweet to you as long as you make my sex organs feel good, as long as you make my life meaningful, as long as I have you to live for.’ In some respects, love is largely a socially acceptable way of expressing sexual instincts. Another point is that it goes back to the condemnation of the physical world, i.e., ‘sex is bad because the body is bad because being physical is bad because the physical world is less than the spiritual world.’ What nonsense! So with questioning my belief in love, a whole ‘pillar’ of my social identity began to topple! Not only do I not need love to be happy, I do not need a relationship (though it is an option, a choice I can freely make) to be happy, I do not need sex to be happy, I do not need a companion to be happy. Because I do not need a relationship to be happy, I do not need to struggle to feel ‘beautiful.’ Because I do not need to struggle to feel ‘beautiful,’ I can accept my body as-it-is. Because I can accept my body as-it-is, I can more readily accept other bodies as-they-are. Because I do not need to struggle to feel beautiful, I do not need to compete with other males to attempt to gain more partners than they, I do not need to concern myself with an individual’s sexual identity to see if they are a possible companion, I do not need to concern myself with whether or not the person is beautiful enough for me, I do not need to justify my self-perceived ‘level’ of beauty by attempting to impose upon another my perceived level of their beauty, and so on and so forth. Because I do not need to feel ‘beautiful enough’ to attract a companion, I do not have to feel fear of rejection for not being beautiful enough.
So the tag-team days of nurture and desire are quickly ending. Yay! I thought I would write these things here so that others might benefit from them; I’m sure others who come on here have had similar experiences to mine. My focus is shifting more to dealing with death and my persistent belief that something endures after physical death. Obviously, the root is fear, and what a fear it is! Oh, just on another note concerning PCEs, I was wondering if someone might describe the identity and the affective faculties as also being the separative faculty. What I mean by this is that the few very brief PCEs I’ve had (they usually last only a few seconds, perhaps 5 or 10 at the most), I feel like a fog clears up and I can seriously SEE for the first time (the visual acuity is what improves the most). The point is that it seems as though the barrier between ‘me’ and everything else is removed, at least in terms of this ‘fog’ that I keep experiencing. The second time it happened, I seriously felt like I was seeing everything in my house for the first time. All I could say was, ‘Woah.’ Then the self bubbled back into action because intensity of the experience frightened me. At least I know that experience is there and that we’re not all delusional. On to peace, happiness, and harmlessness, baby! No 76, 12.5.2005
I found that my thoughts were absolutely bloated with ‘shoulds’ that were not my own and didn’t necessarily correspond with my values. I picked them up from family, friends, teachers and society at large. The trouble is these second hand prescriptions for living begin to take on a life of their own after a while. Your ‘laziness’/rebellion is actually an inarticulate but rational response to an agenda not of your own making. At a certain critical mass of stories you can become quite ‘lazy’ indeed. You can clear this mess of other peoples thinking with investigation. It can take a while but a natural enthusiasm will return when you lose all that mental weight. The whole world might agree that it’s good for you to exercise but question it anyway – you may end up agreeing but in a more heartfelt and natural way. Not only are all my right and wrongs taken from the people around me, but my goals of change are also. I always used to look at it with a sort of perverted gratefulness like ‘ok, society says you have to be like this, I’m not like that, but I’m giving this chance to change, so I’m going to give it my all! Thanks for the chance to change fellow-humans!’ and with the rights and wrongs – I accepted them all blindly – and they have gotten to that threshold where they are ‘mine’ with my distortions. I never would have accepted them if I knew they were not conducive to living happily and harmlessly, without sorrow. These rights and wrongs cause me no end of sorrow! I never would have bargained for that when I adopted them. I just today saw that change thing in action. I was changing for others, while telling myself I was changing for myself. But then I tried to think of a time when changes of that sort ever delivered... and my mind was blank. The same thing with this complex where I want others to do the work for me, take care of me, and that all I have to do is make them like me or gain some sort of upper hand over them just to convince people that I’m a worthwhile human-being. But then, I try to think of a time when anyone else has actually helped me in that way… and my mind is blank. Anyways, I’ve just recently seen some of this stuff. not sure what it is gonna do yet. For the exercise thing, half of it is because I know I feel much better when I sleep shorter hours, stretch often, and do some exercise. The other hand it is just me feeling like I’m gonna get kicked out of society because I am not adhering to there protocol for physical looks for males. Scared of what would happen if I didn’t care. It’s like the main thing that keeps me going is that I wholeheartedly support and try to follow all the ‘you should be like this’ stuff of society, and it feels good when I do my best and I feel a sort of belonging, be it always projected into a future model of me but belonging nonetheless, but it feels like absolute shit when I see that it doesn’t really change anything, and the feeling of security it gives is transient and unreliable. And the complete incompatibility, irrational confusing mess of it all is just creepy to look at. No 55 to No 59
Another thing that has happened to me is that I have a seemingly new clarity about certain issues in my life. I am able to see, in a new way, how ‘I’ have been standing in the way of experiencing happiness and joy both for myself and others around me. One of the things I am looking at now is just how miserable I have been for a very long, long time. This stark realization came recently after I went through a period of being a very, very ‘unhappy camper’, being filled with fears, anger, etc. It struck me after reading your recent posting that this is an important realization. Many of the realizations that come on the way to dismantling one’s social identity are in the form of understandings or realizations of the blindingly obvious – flashes of stunning clarity, unimpeded by the usual self-centred emotional perspective. The blindingly obvious, in this case, has been the realization of the extent of my unhappiness and misery. Along with this, I am questioning so-called spiritual values that I have had for a long time. For quite a while, I have embraced a variant of Gnosticism, believing that the world we see is an illusion, and that I actually exist in a timeless realm, in other words, somewhere else other than where I am right now. The logical extension of this has been the experience that I don’t want to be here, that this world is not my home and I really exist somewhere else. The tenacity with which I have held on to these ideas is truly amazing, but as you have pointed out we are dealing with centuries of social and religious conditioning, so they are not easily discarded. This questioning of the spiritual beliefs that I have maintained is something entirely new for me, because I have rigorously maintained these beliefs in the face of evidence that they were making me quite unhappy and ineffective. It is exciting to be questioning these things but a bit disconcerting too. However, I can see that others have been on this path for quite a while ahead of me, so I am taking some courage from that fact. It is also a stunner to realize that this deep questioning and examination of out-moded spiritual beliefs is dismantling my social identity, that it is part and parcel of this demolition work. This work leads to examining the other end of the duality: the tender instincts of nurture and desire. I have historically been focused on fear and aggression, but both sides of the equation need to be thoroughly explored. Gary to Peter
The trick is to remember not to take the discoveries of your emotions and beliefs as ‘leaks’ of an imperfect personality or as individual bad traits, but to understand them to be manifestations of our genetically inherited disease known as the Human Condition, i.e. common to all. The Human Condition by definition is common to all – however, each individual can instigate and facilitate their freedom only for himself and by himself. Yes. One of the things recently I was looking into was my continued striving for perfection, my fear of making mistakes, and my enormous tendency to put myself down. I have absolutely no interest in ‘loving myself’ as propounded by today’s New Age therapists and self-help gurus. But I am intensely interested in freeing myself from the shame, guilt, fear, doubt, and insecurity of the Human Folly. At times, it seems that this condition is so deeply ingrained that it must be impossible to ever be free from it, but at other times, those ‘selfless’ intervals, freedom from the debilitating instinctual and emotional package is not only possible but actually happening. Gary to Vineeto
Again at the risk of seeming over pedantic, you are on your own in this exercise, which is exactly what makes the process so thrilling. Nobody but you can journey into your psyche, nobody but you knows what is the next thing you have to do, the next vital issue to be faced. I have no special perception, or sense of what is going on, other than what you report and all I, or any other experienced or expert actualist, can do is pass on knowledge, experience and technique – the most valuable of information, for it is all factual. No problem. I can see now why you say so. In order to demolish the social identity, one has to stand on one’s own two feet and sit in the fears that come up rather than rely on the easy way out. I can see now why ‘nerves of steel’ are required, and that this path is not for the weak of heart. You have done this difficult work for yourself, Peter, and so I think you are in an excellent position to offer your expertise. Gary to Peter
I remember when I first came across Richard, I was fired and enthused by actualism and was in the middle of the many emotional upheavals of leaving spirituality behind. Many a time I was confrontational, defensive, provocative, probing, challenging, off-balance, not cool, etc, as I interacted with others. As I have said, this business is not a dispassionate business – yet another way of ‘keeping the lid’ on your passions and your enthusiasm. How else to investigate your beliefs, morals, ethics, feelings and passions but as they arise in the robust adventure of living in the world of people, things and events? However, one can feel anger without lashing out physically, one can feel sorrow without dumping it on others. One can feel, experience and investigate all of the human animal passions without inflicting them on others – hence ‘keep your hands in your pockets’. I think I can say in retrospect that what I went through recently with fears was another layer in dismantling the social identity and uncovering the instincts. It is not, as you point out, a cool dispassionate business this, and there are bound to be many storms along the way. As I have said before, I have a tendency to make more out of these things than they probably deserve. For instance, I have noticed that it is a distinct tendency of mine to think that I have been terribly angry and offended someone else and when later checking this out with the other person they tell me in no uncertain terms that I did not seem very angry at all and that what happened was hardly worth bothering about. One can feel the anger yet keep the lid on the feeling, such that one is not imposing upon or offending others, as you pointed out. The instincts of fear and aggression seem at times to be all rolled up in one – hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Fear, in my experience, turns so quickly to aggression – although one is ‘keeping one’s hands in one’s pockets’, still the aggressive drive is there, one can feel oneself pulling in, feeling cornered, ready to pounce at a moments notice. At some point, the fear turns to aggression through either a verbal lashing out or lightening quick physical movements. An extremely interesting thing on the actualism path is that one can be aware of and observe these movements of blind instinct without feeding into them, in other words, without carrying them to execution behaviourally. One can be aware of one’s aggression, as in having the hidden desire to wound or lash out at another, without actually doing it. One also sees how one reacts to any instinctual aggression or fear with shamefaced apologies, regretful mutterings, etc., and one can similarly observe the movement of these responses without feeding into them and carrying them to execution. This is not at all the same thing as the religious and spiritual people practice as in ‘forgiveness’ and ‘turning the other cheek’, which is actually a swinging to the tender and nurturing instincts, or a deliberate suppression or stifling of the aggressive or fearful urges. No, the thing is to investigate and uncover, rather than bringing the process full stop by bringing in spiritual/religious injunctions, guilt, remorse, and swinging to the tender passions. Just another little ‘pass-on’ that I found very useful on many occasions. It relates to the inevitable reactions and comments that others will offer to you on the path – when they offer their intuitive, insightful assessments as to what you are feeling or what you are ‘putting out’. I used to take these assessments on board until I discovered that, more often than not, their assessment was false, emotionally charged, defensive, attacking, etc. With practice, diligence and determination, I learned to be my own counsel, judge and jury, to make an honest assessment of my own feelings and reactions and not rely on others. The key word is honest and this is where pure intent, firmly based on your own pure consciousness experiences of perfection and purity, will be your guide – for the last person you want to fool is you. The determination to be my own counsel, not to rely on or depend on others is, in large part, what my most recent bout of fear was about. After going through this for a time, and getting to the point where I felt I could bear no more, it suddenly dawned on me how far I had come and why I was feeling so afraid. I have actually turned my back on things that used to be comforting to me, things that I was more or less brainwashed into believing were necessary to me to prop up a sagging ego, a terribly deficient sense of who I am. This includes all kinds of emotional ‘support’ from other people around me, including my partner, involving myself in a ‘support’ group based on spiritual principles, and in general trying to find someone to ‘understand’ and commiserate. I had been brainwashed into believing, and I took on board wholeheartedly this brainwashing, that I could not survive on my own without these props and ‘supports’. I earlier thought I had thrown over board totally all my spiritual values, but I found that there was one more big source of stink smelling up the place that I needed to throw out. Since I have done that, I know I can stand on my own two feet and take care of myself by myself, that I don’t need to be soothed or comforted by needing other people’s ‘help’. The expression I like to keep in mind is ‘don’t let the buggers get you down’, for others will have a vested interest in cutting you down to size and bringing you back to the herd. The ‘tall poppy syndrome’ is what it is known as in this country. I wrote in my Journal about daring to stick my head above the parapet and when you do you have to have the intestinal fortitude to keep it there and not let the buggers get you down. Richard’s writings on spiritual mailing lists provide ample evidence of actual innocence personified in the face of personal attacks and spurious assessments by others. Yes, I’ve found that I am careful about what I say to others many times, and that I calculate just what seems to be the right thing to say in a situation, rather than getting my head in too deep. This is not always true, however, and there have been those times when I have thrown caution to the wind and gone for it, speaking my mind plainly and waiting to see what happens. The extent to which people are invested in society’s cherished values and ethics is truly amazing. I had an experience of this with the supervisor incident. I saw my peers and colleagues circling the wagons to keep me on the outside. It was a most uncanny thing, and a bit disturbing at the time, but I am glad now that I am on the outside rather than back-scratching and backslapping agreement with everyone else. To be free, you have to be able to stand on your own, be totally alone and have confidence in what you are, and not bend to the urge to conform or beat a safe path with the multitude. Firstly, be bloody well pleased that you are having these reactions, that you are aware of them, that you can name them, that you can observe them in action. This is, in itself, a significant achievement, a mighty step, something that very few people manage to do. We are specifically trained not to do this in our childhood years by the imposition of morals and ethics – the whole good, bad, right and wrong assessment we automatically place upon our feelings and emotions. To be able to get beyond the automatic response of repressing fear and aggression and indulging in nurture and desire, and to be able to see and experience what is actually happening in one’s own psyche in this very moment, is no little thing. To develop this ability is the primary key to becoming free from the instinctual passions – from this bold step all else will unfold provided one’s intent is pure. The very act of observing, questioning into, uncovering, and investigating ‘who one is’ is indeed a radical step to take with far-reaching consequences. It is often easy to overlook this. Your words of encouragement here I would do well to remember at those most difficult times when investigating a particularly deeply entrenched emotion, attitude, or value. Yes, we are trained growing up and later not to think for ourselves and above all else not to question ‘normality’. When one sees the barbarity and insanity that has passed for ‘normal behaviour’ one has definitely taken a confident step on the road to being free from the whole stinking, rotten mess that is the Human Condition. To reiterate, this being aware of your beliefs, morals, ethics, feelings and passions is an unnatural act, for we are taught the opposite in childhood and for those who have practiced Eastern religious selective awareness in adulthood, it requires an about-face that is apparently too daunting, even for the average spiritual ego. We are taught to take on these beliefs, morals, ethics, and feelings through a combination of reward and punishment. Many of the hurts one has experienced in life, particularly in childhood, come from the brutalizing process of enculturation and socialization by which one’s authentic experience is nearly completely eradicated and one is pressured and coerced to follow the herd, to become another fine upstanding citizen of one’s nation or country, all to willing to sacrifice one’s body and one’s life for yet another unliveable ideal. Gary to Peter
Yes, to be a social identity, in whatever form or flavour, is to be firmly ensnared in the grip of a sad and sorry Humanity. To get back to a previous point, the social identity is set in place as a means of controlling and subverting the instincts. One is given an identity by one’s family, tribe, peers, etc, and one willingly and gladly takes in this identity as being ‘me’. When one begins to question deeply into whether this ‘me’ has any reality or not, one experiences a rootless, groundless kind of fear and anxiety which seems to be warning one off from further investigation. I see this very fear and anxiety as being evidence that the technique is working, that one is actually demolishing the social identity. But it is not the only evidence for the real proof of the pudding is evidence that one is becoming happy and harmless. Fear begins to be replaced with the certainty that one could not harm another even if one wanted to. Humanity is genetically/ instinctually and historically/ socially bound to consist of separate feuding tribes and families and religions. You only have to observe the fierce ongoing resistance to any attempts to break the stranglehold this tribal conditioning has on human beings. The blind, senseless resistance to the ‘globalization’ of trade, commerce, communications, language and culture is fascinating to watch. A united Europe is now a faded post-war dream, as every tin pot region seeks autonomy and independence, every religious/ spiritual group declares their right to be different, and groups desperately seek to preserve their cultural roots, traditions, language, beliefs, superstitions, sacred places, buildings and holy relics. The only way to regard, and treat, others as fellow human beings is to rid yourself of all this rubbish – a process of ‘self’-diminishing that can, if undertaken with pure intent, lead to ‘self’-immolation. That the way to an Actual Freedom consists in a process of brain engineering/re-engineering is given credence not only by Richard’s findings but also neurological findings of the amazing plasticity of the nervous system and human brain. The brain adapts not only to changes in the environment in response to certain types of stimulation but also changes in behaviour. In other words, when I become more happy and harmless, the changes in my behaviour towards others is actually producing further changes in my brain, which then leads to further changes in my behaviour, etc, etc, through a continuous feedback-loop. While I am sure this may be hotly debated by some, I think we are seeing that the human brain is capable of some amazing adaptations and rearrangements, all of which signal the plasticity of the nervous system. The realizations I had about this issue was triggered in meeting my son one day and clearly seeing that many of ‘his’ beliefs, attitudes, opinions and mannerisms were ‘mine’ and further how those that I regarded and cherished as ‘mine’ were really those that were passed on to me from my father. As Pink Floyd sang – ‘just another brick in the wall’ – a wall that stretches unbroken back into the mists of time. And as an instinctual animal I am but one of billions of blind nature’s cannon fodder in the battle for survival of the species, the product of my father’s sperm and I had but one purpose – my primordial sperm-spreading purpose in seeding an egg so as to reproduce yet another combatant in this senseless passionate struggle. The sheer power of realizations such as these can lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair which can lead to ‘dark night of the soul’ experiences with their flip side ‘I’ve seen the Light’ experiences. Sometimes the path to freedom can feel like a tightrope walking act as the very ground of one’s social identity and instinctual being starts to shimmer, shake and, sometimes, even disappear temporarily. The cute thing is when it does disappear temporarily, suddenly there is a pure consciousness experience; suddenly all is perfect and pure, pristine and peaceful as the storm of emotions and neuroses that was ‘me’, just a moment ago, disappears. Yes, part of the thrilling aspect of going into all this is the sense that someone is ‘getting somewhere’, and the ‘somewhere’ is actually nowhere at all. It is always here right now where you and I are. When one’s fevered sense of being ceases temporarily, there is surcease from the relentless battle for survival, an end to fear and passionate imagination. Everything is perfectly in it’s place. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, these experiences are fleeting, and the very fleetingness spurs one on to find a way to experience this again and again... Gary to Peter
What I found works best for me when I have any emotional issue is that I always take it that I have something to look at in me. When someone else’s emotion triggers a reaction in me, again, I have something to look at in me. This way there is no conflict that needs to be dealt with ‘out in the open’. If I am not emotionally affected, the situation is not a conflict and the issue on hand can easily be dealt with according to what is silly and sensible in order to find a win-win solution for everyone. Should the others insist on their emotions, which they often do, it is not in my hands to convince them otherwise. Yes, I think I can see where you are coming from on this. For me, at this point, every thing is ‘up for grabs’, meaning that I am questioning everything. And I have been doing this for quite a while now. So my ‘cherished belief’ that conflicts can be dealt with in the open is also up for questioning too. I appreciate your saying that any feeling or emotion triggers for you looking at yourself, and this is as it should be. I could not agree more. I also think that any conflict with another occurs because ‘I’ myself am in conflict, and if I look intensively into what ‘I’ am in conflict about (usually as it relates to the social identity), the conflict itself will dissipate, alleviating me from working the conflict out with others. Gary to Vineeto
In one of our conversations I compared my deep instinctual feelings of guilt, terror and fear that are linked up to the social conditioning to an invisible electric fence that gives me a painful ‘shock’ should I come close to it. It is terrifying until I willingly explore it, feel the charge of the hurt, label it, think it over and learn to recognize it over and over again for what it is: sensations in my body. Otherwise there is always: ‘I am afraid of...’, ‘I hate...’, ‘I am guilty because’... The ending of these sentences comes from the social conditioning and the beginning stems directly from what you call the Human Condition. This invisible fence keeps me from being happy for my mind has learned the trick of lying to myself that I don’t need to come close to these terrifying boundaries and still be reasonably happy (hence the appeal of the Buddhist middle-way wishy-washy way of netti-netti ‘not this not that’). But the sensation of these psychological boundaries suffocates my self esteem and the life of freedom. Sometimes I move in a narrow passage between the feeling of pain and guilt from an unfulfilled desire for freedom and, on the opposite side, the pain of social conditioning and its boundary:
Until I develop enough endurance for the emotional pain and walk right through this fence that guards my social identity. No 7 to Richard
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. 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. Naturally, one can talk to others through the medium of this list, as well as read the readings, but there is no allegiance nor membership with a defining body of actualism ‘believers’. This further contributes to the dismantlement of the social identity because ‘I’ thrive on being a member of a group with certain defining beliefs. Without them, I experience first-hand that ‘I’ am nothing but a wayward social identity, an illusion, careering around in fear and confusion. Gary to Peter
... you always know that if something keeps coming back again then it is time to sit down and really nut out and investigate exactly what is going on, what is the nature and substance of this re-occurring feeling or emotion. Ultimately, it is your own integrity that ensures the process of actualism is fail-safe. There is a terrific weight of conditioning and learning making up the socially inculcated social identity, not to mention hundreds of thousands of years of life on earth contributing to the strength of instinctual passions, genetically inherited by all creatures. This is not so easily sloughed off, as I have found out up to this point. It takes much determined effort to investigate the nature and substance of these re-occurring feelings and emotions, yes. But with enough determined investigation, they seem to melt away of their own once one turns their full awareness to them. It is well worth the time and effort spent investigating these things, even if at the time it seems like a joy-killer – actually the feelings and passions being investigated are the joy-killers, not the other way around. It is such an obvious thing to do – to simplify one’s life so as to reduce stress. Not only does one become physically healthier but by reducing the franticness and busy-ness of continually complicating what is simple, it makes it easier to set aside the necessary time to investigate the real causes of your malice and sorrow. Again be wary of the usual alternatives – deliberately engaging in battle to prove your warrior-worth or deliberately withdrawing form battle to prove your good-ness. No need to add that the third alternative is the common sense approach – eliminate the ‘he’ or ‘she’ who feels stressed-out and/or seeks refuge in feeling blissed-out. The experience of stress is interesting in itself. What seems to cause stress often is nothing other than having competing demands to perform complicated tasks within limited time constraints. When I have ‘stress’, I feel that I am being pulled in too many directions at once and hence am not effective. Or, ‘stress’ can be the smoke screen for other feelings and emotions -anger, annoyance, frustration, etc. All these things seem to be involved. I have devoted some attention over the years to becoming more detail-oriented and organized. I think this helps reduce the stress of being overwhelmed with details. So I think there are sometimes task demands that get involved with stress, particularly job stress. Then the sensible thing seems to be to prioritize, organize, and such, and if one cannot do these things, one needs to learn to do so. And there are the emotional aspects of stress, such as eliminating anger, frustration, etc. Another sensible thing to do seems to be, when one is experiencing stress, break it down into what one is actually experiencing – is it anger, frustration, boredom, exhaustion? Name it, first of all, look at it, examine what is happening, and use the silly-sensible comparison in order to determine what is the next most sensible thing to do. Gary to Peter
Hello No 3... One needs to be neither in love with love, or embittered and disillusioned by love’s failures. One needs to see oneself for who one is, and when I use the word ‘one’ I am referring to the alien entity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body. When one really sees oneself for who one is, one is free to be what one is. I was reading this last paragraph and was having trouble making sense of it. Could you please explain a bit more what you mean by ‘When one really sees oneself for who one is, one is free to be what one is. When I used the word ‘who’ I am, I was referring to the instinctual, emotional/passionate entity that inhabits this flesh-and-blood body. I was also referring to the social identity that each human being develops over top of the rudimentary animal instincts as a means of regulating one’s impulses and keeping them under control. The social identity is carefully and painstakingly nurtured and inculcated throughout the early years of childhood and subsequently refined and added on to as one gets older. This identity, based as it is on the primitive instincts, is an intruder that continually sabotages one’s efforts to live in peace and harmony with one’s fellow human beings. It is ultimately the cause of all human suffering and sorrow. The library and glossary section of the Actual Freedom website defines this identity thusly:
So to paraphrase what is written above, I would say one needs to continually run the ‘How am I experiencing this present moment of being alive?’ question in order to track the instinctual and socially instilled entity in all its doings in order to be freed of one’s genetic instinctual heritage and socially inculcated programming. One needs to clearly see that ‘who’ one is is standing in the way of experiencing the perfection and purity that are the essential conditions of this physical universe. To be happy and harmless, one needs to eliminate the identity, the who, in toto so that one can then be what one is, which is this flesh-and-blood body sensately and reflectively aware. One is then freed from the illusions of the ego and the delusion of there being an Immortal Soul that continues on after physical death. As what one is, one realizes that this present moment of being alive is one’s only moment of being alive, freeing one from the past and the future and enabling one to delight in simply being here. Gary to No 3 Web page designed by The Actual Freedom Trust |
