MARK to Alan: The town where I and Peter, Vineeto, Richard and Grace live is full of cars with bumper stickers that say things like ‘The Goddess Is Dancing’, ‘Truth Is’, ‘Thou Art That’ and so on; so I have this plan to make actual freedom bumper stickers that say things like ‘I am not’, and, my favourite, ‘I want to be reborn as worm’s poo’. With the funds raised from the sale of the bumper stickers we could open a plot shop where we sell second hand plots, recycled lost plots, plots handed in voluntarily by actualists. This could be the beginning of an empire!!! You – being head disciple and all – I thought I’d run it by you first and see what you thought.

MARK: I was talking to someone the other day, a spiritual seeker who paid to go and ‘just be’ with a spiritual master who has recently drawn large crowds in the town where I live. I asked her what she got from being around this person, to which she replied that she felt ‘totally accepted’ and that she was perfect just as she is. I asked her if her life felt like she is perfect just as she is, and she said no, that she still felt ‘pretty fucked up’. I reported that I could not see the point of spending $700 and travelling 1000 kilometres to spend a week around someone feeling warm and fuzzy in a rarefied atmosphere, and to sit silently and not change anything when one was really feeling inner turmoil most of the time in daily life.

GARY: I would like to introduce myself to you and the other members of the list. As I am quite a neophyte to Actual Freedom and the Freedom List, perhaps some comments about how I arrived here are in order. I have for some time been participating in the Listening-l list, a list set up to explore the teachings of J. Krishnamurti. As a participant there, I first made the acquaintance of Richard and had the briefest of correspondence with him.

Some of things that he talked about hit home with me, and a couple of his remarks to me had an impact that lingered on for several months, kind of dormant in my mind, and particularly lately a conviction has been growing that there is a way to find happiness in life through an ending of violence and suffering. The difference now for me is that, whereas previously I would have regarded such a goal as quixotic at the best, now I regard the goal as attainable. Another difference is that I am seeing that happiness now is impossible as long as there is a ‘me’ interfering. ‘I’ will always sabotage whatever meagre supply of happiness I find. However, as I am very new in this enterprise, I have many doubts and objections. Perhaps one of the strongest reservations I have is this: I have been deluded so many times before in searching for ‘the answer’ in spiritual groups, therapy, and ‘self-improvement’ activities, I feel that I am ‘waiting for the left shoe to drop’, to use an expression to point to the experience of being disillusioned.

There is a healthy dose of scepticism at this point, a not wanting to take the whole thing hook-line-and-sinker. I guess I am saying that, whereas I thought I was willing to take the plunge unreservedly, there is a hesitation, a wait and see approach. And perhaps that is as it should be. But I want to forge on with this. One example of this is writing this post.

My usual approach is to reticently test the waters before jumping in on a list such as this. I am excited to have this opportunity to ‘compare notes’ with others that are going through this, and so I am jumping right in there.

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.

PETER: 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.

GARY: 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. 13.7.2000

PETER: I would say it is impossible for those who have been on the spiritual path to immediately take actualism on, hook-line-and-sinker, for it is completely opposite to Spiritualism. To do so, without understanding the radical difference between the two, is to completely miss the point and to only indulge in further delusion, or attempt to take on actualism as a yet another belief-system. This is why so much of one’s early investigations involve freeing oneself from spiritual morals, ethics, values and beliefs such that one begins the process of turning around and facing the other direction.

GARY: Yes, I think you are right on with that one. I do see the tendency to take on actualism as some kind of new belief system, and perhaps the tendency is so strong when one has only just begun to examine their pre-existing belief system.

Part of what I see is wanting to hide behind a new belief, adopt new teachers to replace the old, a new dependency to replace the old hero worship. It is very subtle and insidious. In this scheme of things, the intent to become happy and carefree becomes an ideal to be sought after, and the funniest thing is that I think I must conform to the image of being happy and carefree, when in fact there are those ‘undercurrents of malice and sorrow’ which are such fertile grounds for investigation.

PETER: The real-world is an instinct-fuelled, blind and senseless survival battle of humans vs. humans, exemplified by all the wars, rapes, murders, domestic violence, child abuse, corruption, suicides, despair and loneliness. The spiritual world is a massive denial of, and dissociation from, this madness, based on the belief that there is a Greater Reality.

GARY: One of the things that I have done for a very long time is pray. I used to pray on my knees but came to the understanding that it is silly to prostrate myself to a God whom I could only conceive of as being Loving and not requiring prostrate submission. But I continued to pray, and it has been an almost automatic habit, something that I do when I awake, on the ride to work, at work, praying for guidance, etc. I still feel the impulse to pray, as it is largely a matter of habit. But it also a form of fear: praying out of a sense of insufficiency, praying because one is confused and does not know what to do, etc. I think it is going to be very difficult to give up this habit, but as I begin to give it up, I sense that the fear which the habit hid can be more deeply investigated. I know it is silly but I feel a fear to give it up, a childish fear that God is going to be angry at me for doing this and I will be punished.

PETER: For an actualist, this abandoning the spiritual path is the beginning of the adventure of ‘self’-discovery, not an end unto itself.

GARY: I continue to feel the excitement at being on the threshold of something new, something uncharted, vast and open. I am being careful not to dive right in trying to take on examination of fear and aggression. I am slowing down somewhat in my approach and taking time to examine the spiritual values and beliefs which I have cultivated for so long. I appreciate your advice to read your Journal, and I shall. 17.7.2000

GARY: Alan....

ALAN: I acknowledge your courage in even daring to question your spiritual beliefs.

GARY: Questioning ‘spiritual’ beliefs is one of the more exciting things about this right now.

I think it is getting somewhat easier. The belief that there is a God, or Goddesses, or a spirit world beyond the actual physical world as seen by the eyes, heard by the ears, or felt through touch is ancient, deeply imbedded in the psyche. It seems clear from modern archaeological excavations, that the belief in a spiritual realm paralleled human evolution, probably since the very beginning. It appears to be part and parcel of the Human Condition. It seems to me that to be questioning these beliefs is treading on ‘sacred’ ground, a place where few dare to tread, at least I have dared to tread. At a previous time in my life, I was a dedicated atheist, actually a refreshing thing, now that I think about it. But I went through a period of questioning that. Since it was coincident with my active alcohol and drug addiction, and since I was on a suicide course at the time, I figured I had nothing to lose by adopting spiritual beliefs and turning my life over to a Higher Power. Now, on the other end of things, I am seeing that the belief in the Higher Power has not delivered the goods in terms of freeing me from malice and sorrow and that I’ve got quite a bit of work to do to clean that mess up. One can be sober and miserable too... Now I am not so quick to pray when I am in a situation in which I feel doubt and fear and my first inclination, most times, is to look into it, investigate it, rather than resignedly accepting it. I am beginning to prefer using my common sense and intelligence to deal with what comes up rather than sitting on my posterior-part in fairy-tale land waiting for divine guidance. 18.7.2000

GARY: I was talking to a man yesterday who was reeling from the news that his ex-wife, a woman who is quite dependent on, was diagnosed with cancer. He is naturally shocked, trying to digest this news, and was obviously experiencing a great deal of anger. At one point he said ‘Life is not fair’, something no doubt many of us have experienced in moments of great loss or crisis. Then, he said ‘There’s got to be a better place than this’. I thought, to myself, ‘No, there isn’t’, but didn’t say what I was thinking. It seemed that in this statement of his was summarized a point of view common to spiritual and religious followers, and perhaps much of humanity in general. In the past, I might have nodded approval to this statement, but this time I did not. It hit me all of a sudden that the belief that ‘there’s a better place than this’ causes and contributes to a lot of malice and sorrow. In other words, if I place my hope in a ‘better place than this’, in an afterlife, after death (which is what I assumed he was talking about), then I am going to be incapable of investigating into and examining the things that are making me desperately unhappy with life now as-it-is. It seems to me that it is all a big escape to believe in an afterlife, an all too ‘human’ condition. Perhaps there is a ‘better place than this’ but it is not in some imaginary afterlife or Heaven peopled with Gods, saints and gurus. It is right here and right now when ‘I’, with all my beliefs, values, expectations of how things should be, and the instinctual passions come to an end. There is indeed a better place than this. 20.7.2000

GARY: In a recent post to No. 5, I told of my addiction and treatment for it in 1985. Both before and after treatment, I attended AA. Particularly in the years immediately following treatment, I was a zealous AA member. In recent years, and particularly since having a good relationship with a woman and setting up house together, I have slacked off on my attendance of meetings. Now, in fact, I am deeply questioning the methodology of AA and the meetings and people themselves. I don’t mean openly questioning, as in dialogue with others or argumentation. I mean questioning to myself the spiritual values and identity that I adopted in my active years in AA. I have found it increasingly difficult when I do attend AA meetings. I usually attend once or twice during the week in the town where I work as a social worker. When people get to the part, as they inevitably do, where they relate what God has done for them or praise God in gratitude for getting them sober, I can scarcely relate. I can relate in the sense of having made these grateful proclamations myself many times in the past, but I no longer feel that way. I feel at times that I am in the midst of a Christian Revival meeting, with people getting up on the soapbox to praise the Lord and exhort other believers to do the same. This feeling has intensified in me since finding out about actualism and particularly since I have deliberately exerted myself to understanding and jettisoning spiritual values, practices, and beliefs. I feel the methodology of AA is all wrong. I know my AA friends would probably tell me I am heading for a drunk (which I seriously don’t believe to be the case), and that I have got it all wrong.

*

I still intend to attend AA but I feel I have parted ways with many of the things, which I used to give head-nodding approval to, mainly the ‘spiritual’ part of the program. I also do not seem to have as much of a desire for affiliation, the need to ‘rub elbows’ with people, as I used to have. All of this amounts to either a kind of self-imposed exile or an ostracization from something that I used to consider as essential to continued life and happiness as food and air. I am not sure any more. When I do attend meetings, I enjoy hearing people talk about how their lives have changed for the better with continued sobriety, as has mine. And I also like to hear what people are finding out about living in this world in peace and harmony with others and themselves, but I chafe when they start talking about so-called spiritual things, what Richard has dubbed ‘passionate fantasies and imaginative hallucinations’. The founders of AA, like many human beings, held all kinds of fanciful ideas about things spiritual, attending séances, revivals, etc, etc. I can certainly relate to that kind of delusion. At one time, I was firmly convinced that I could communicate with dead spirits myself!

I have noticed something else of late. It is my perception that the individuals who are the most outwardly ‘spiritual’, professing to be led by a Master or to have a direct connection with a ‘Higher Power’ also seem to be the people who are the most desperately unhappy, grieved, and/or malicious. This does not always hold up in every instance. And I am not trying to make myself out to be superior to ‘spiritual’ people, because I have walked in the same tracks on the same road. But I think that the more deluded one is by the Tried and Failed teachings of the God-men and gurus, the more unhappy one is, in general. And unhappiness always shows its face in one way or another. 11.8.2000

VINEETO: Turning to God is a very common reaction to desperation and sorrow. Neale D. Walsh, the author of ‘Conversations with God’ is only one of the many, many reports of someone talking to God in his or her darkest moments. Such altering of consciousness is the result of our inbuilt survival mechanism and the chemicals kick in to prevent one from being overpowered by dread and suicidal desperation – though it does not always work.

GARY: Yes, this is true. In hindsight, I would say my (what I later dubbed as) ‘spiritual awakenings’ were really exceptional periods of clarity, with the return of sensibility and sanity. Addiction results in such debased acts of anti-social and destructive behaviour, that without the protective haze induced by drugs, the addict is literally on the verge of suicide. The experience is so powerful that it is no surprise that people reach out to what is on offer as an alternative. Additionally, it is no surprise that people forgo their common sense and dive right into a spiritual lifestyle because it offers what drugs so handsomely promised but failed to deliver. The desire for drugs stems from the same instinctual basis that other addictions do. This is becoming clearer and clearer to me. No wonder that addicts, once newly recovering, are so susceptible to a host of replacement addictions – food, sex, caffeine, work, etc., etc. – the underling problem, of course, is the desire to grab for more of what we already have, never being satisfied with the simple pleasures of life. There is also considerable self-aggrandizement at work. 15.8.2000

VINEETO: To ‘reject the notion’ that there is a God is the beginning of questioning your belief.

GARY: Yes, it seems to be working that way. Rejecting God and all the other spiritual and religious stuff that I have been fed and fed myself has indeed been the real start for me of this whole thing. Had I known before I really approached Actual Freedom that I would give up my spiritual and religious beliefs, I doubt seriously that I would have persisted in the venture. But the time was right and the ‘handwriting was on the wall’ so to speak.

I have rejected all of that now and I am better off for it. The house of cards did not collapse, as I feared. Nothing really happened at all. There were no thunderbolts and divine punishments to be endured. I am better off without believing in God because now I can think for myself and, what’s more, these fears that were the basis for my fervent belief can be examined ‘out in the open’ without the pacifier of prayer and religious ritual.

Now I can really see the seduction of the belief in an afterlife, the belief in a Heavenly Father or Mother or Whatever. It is all an enormous illusion. How blind I have been! I remember thinking something similar when I adopted the belief in a Metaphysical Realm.

Now, it is completely in the opposite direction.

VINEETO: But you are right – you are in deep trouble when you irrevocably stop believing in God, when the belief resolves in the light of facts. A part of your social identity flies out the window and because of this, some instinctual fear is activated and causes yet another storm in the teacup.

GARY: It is the much touted ‘Fear of God’ that makes a person a righteous, religious soul. I have no fear of God now, and hence, I think there is that ‘indifference to hierarchy’ mentioned in the actualism writings. With the core fear of death and fear of God faced directly, I am getting over my fears of the authority of others as well as questioning my own authority. The whole warp and weave of the structure of the ‘self’ is coming unravelled, and I am finding that the atavistic fears are subsiding, to be replaced with a deep sense of freedom and peace. Perhaps I will face renewed onslaughts of the atavistic fears, as the psyche is still intact but withering away, or so I think. A question in my mind at this point is whether I have the guts and intestinal fortitude to stick it out to the end of ‘me’, in other words putting the same effort into ending ‘me’ that I have invested in maintaining this social identity, or whether I will settle for a second rate life. 13.9.2000

GARY: The love of the Master (in my case the Christian Jesus) replaced the missing love of the wife who was long gone, the father’s love, the family, etc. It seemed so stimulating to think that I was loved by Jesus and even known by him personally, that I had a direct line to the love of God, to put it plainly. It was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing, I can see that now, but I could not see it then. But yes, there is the underlying feeling of separation that fuels this search for Love. Now, I must say, I do not feel that way. I know there is a wonderful actual world there, and even if I am not intensely experiencing it at the moment, ‘I’ am getting in the way and only need let go of the controls and get out of the way to have the actual world rise to my sight.

VINEETO: It is fascinating to read your ‘It was so self-evidently self-aggrandizing’ – such a simple statement about a simple fact. Everyone else I am corresponding with at present is frantically defending Love, Beauty, Supreme Intelligence, Compassion, the Unknown, universal Consciousness and whatever other names they have invented for their God. To acknowledge the fact that god is a mere figment of passionate imagination is more than most will bear.

GARY: No, I am not into defending these ideals and I will not. It was hard for me, looking back at it in retrospect, to admit of my former hero’s (Krishnamurti’s) debauches with his friend’s wife. At the time, I did not see the relevance of inquiring into what he did or didn’t do. But I am looking at that differently now. I think the critical thing is to be harmless. What an enormous hypocrisy to say things out of one side of your mouth while practising something differently in your personal life. I will not be disingenuous.

VINEETO: The more of my metaphysical beliefs I questioned, the more I was amazed and embarrassed how gullible I had been. There was hardly any New Dark Age (NDA) superstition that I did not credit as being somehow true. So that ‘house of cards’ has definitely ‘collapsed’. Now I want to know the facts and when I hear some reporter or scientist voice an opinion or theory, I am suss about his or her philosophical bent and underlying affective investment – just because something is being printed or reported doesn’t make it a fact. But slowly I am learning the art of extracting facts from opinions, distinguishing feelings from factual information, making sense of the world in a completely opposite way to before.

GARY: I too had been interested in all of the New Age gobbledygook. The more bizarre the better. I am still on quite a few New Age type of mailing lists and get catalogues and such in the mail. I throw them in the trash. 21.9.2000

VINEETO: The same process of investigation applies for other affective feelings. Unless you feel sorrow you cannot investigate it. Once you have sufficiently dug around in one particular feeling and know all there is to know, you don’t go down the same sad and dull alley again and again, just out of habit or fashion. The cunning entity of the ‘self’ will want to hang on to emotions and feelings even if they have been fully understood, because feeling and emotions is the very substance of the ‘self’. But with sufficient experience one has the choice to deliberately avoid the pitfalls, or, as Richard says, ‘nip the feeling in the bud’. But first, the feelings have to come ‘off the shelf’, be dusted off, be stripped of their moral and ethical taboos and rules and be thoroughly and experientially explored.

GARY: I was using the word ‘avoid’ in the sense of this ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’ that you and Richard are talking about, not so much in the sense of avoiding the Glory and Glitz of Enlightenment. I can see now that ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’ is nowhere near the same as suppressing a feeling. For instance, one can nip the feeling of anger in the bud by recognizing a situation as one in which anger has been habitually experienced or expressed. Given that one has experientially investigated into anger and aggression and understood how anger, in any and all forms, blocks the path to freedom, one has a definite choice as to what to do and experience in a given situation.

This is not at all the same thing that spiritual seekers do as in ‘turning the other cheek’ when angry or offended, which is really just a supercilious and hypocritical suppression of one’s feeling state. The actualist experientially investigates feelings and emotions as they come up, whereas the spiritualist is intent upon following spiritual or moral precepts as a way of controlling the wayward instincts. The actualist is concerned to bring about the always existing peace-on-earth in himself/herself and for others through eradication and extirpation of the rudimentary animal instincts with their corresponding sense of ‘being’, whereas the spiritualist merely substitutes ‘Being’ for ‘being’ in a self-aggrandizing grab for the Glory of Enlightenment. No wonder spiritual people remain so violent and arrogant. 2.10.2000

PETER: Having said that, there are also times when there is nothing much happening in the cut and thrust of life, when one has a chance to put one’s feet up and contemplate upon a particular aspect of the Human Condition, to ponder on some incident or reaction, to observe others, to read a bit, watch TV, or whatever. This is an opportunity where one can actively pursue some issue that may be pertinent at the time. A bit of clear thinking, some introspection and a good deal of contemplation can lead to many fascinating discoveries. Sometimes these occasions also lead to plumbing the Stygian depths, or the Enthralling heights, but these emotional happenings are the direct by-product of curious, naïve contemplation and not the main event.

GARY: It seems that people on a religious and/or (these words are interchangeable) spiritual path are always caught up in their feeling of uniqueness or different-ness from ordinary ‘worldly’ people. When I was into the spiritual lifestyle, I always had a sense of mission or a feeling of being special compared to the average heathens around me. Take most Christian people, for instance, with their ingrained persecution complex – it seems to me that they are always looking to be persecuted by others, and are rarely cognizant of their self-righteous, pious attitude towards ‘non-believers’ and their downright persecutory attitude towards others who are not members of their little coterie. The whole thrust of Christianity is the conversion of others to their belief system, not to mention the unspeakable horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of carrying forward God’s word. And this is true of other religions as well. I appreciate particularly, Peter, your discernment of the lure of Eastern religions to the ordinary Western mind, and the fact that many do not consider these to be religions peddling their snake oil in another form different from the old-time religions. People think there is something chic about being a Buddhist. I myself really had too much, for instance, of a supervisor quoting to me the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism like I was some waif in need of redemption. I found it high time to speak my mind about it rather continuing to be spoon-fed the watered down version of these Eastern ‘Truths’. The superciliousness of some people I know who have been seduced by the Eastern religions is quite amazing. Such people really think they have something to say and they hide behind their teachings of the Buddha and pass them off on others as the truth revealed. I am taking this opportunity to rant a bit, and I think I will continue with this most healthy activity for a while longer. I am sick to the core of all the ridiculous and fantastical beliefs that are passed off as ‘Truth’ to the unsuspecting. I am sick of the God-men and God-women, those who have need of a Master, sick of their disciples and adherents, sick of the whole rotten mess. The world will be much better off when these religions atrophy, wither and die off for lack of support.

Of course, I am not holding my breath until this happens. I see plenty of ‘lambs to the slaughter’ around me in the people I work with. Phew! It feels good to rant! 5.11.2000

PETER: Many, many spiritual people, despite their years on the spiritual path, have never ever bothered to investigate their social/ spiritual conditioning as many simply swapped their Western beliefs for Eastern beliefs. The main reason for this blindness is the practice of denial and transcendence – they don’t want to be here anyway and have no interest at all in being a happy and harmless citizen of the world. ‘Be in the world but not of it’ is the best they can muster – a pathetic statement of non-committal non-participation, if ever there was one. They never connect their own feelings of nationalistic pride with war and conflict between nations, they never connect their own spiritual beliefs with war and conflict between religions, they never connect their own inability to live with others in peace and harmony as being at all related to the violent events on the evening news. Their armour of denial, their myopic ‘self’-centred selective awareness and their comfortable cocoon of moral superiority and associated spiritual pride serves to isolate them in an inner world totally of their own making.

GARY: Yes, I think this is true. People do not connect their religious/spiritual beliefs to conflict between peoples and conflict between religions. Religious people can be quite violent, as I found out in my time with the Quakers. Group members often maligned the beliefs of other religious sects, maintaining a sense of superiority, and there were plenty of squabbles within the sect between people with different beliefs and outlooks. It all seemed to me to be a battle for supremacy, and I got sick of it. I saw my own ridiculous efforts to ‘keep the peace’ or ally myself with other factions, often feeling caught in the middle. At other times, I tried, by hook or crook, to impose my beliefs on others in my own bid for supremacy. Despite the Quakerly religious admonition to adhere to a non-violent way of life, conflict within the sect seemed rife. Eventually something, probably the desire to be free of it all, tugged at me so strongly, that I quit and never went back.

PETER: I found that after my spiritual years I was totally ignorant of the inherent workings and functional aberrations of the Human Condition and I deliberately embarked on a journey of exploration, comfortably undertaken lazing in front of the TV or sitting in front of the computer. This investigation of grim reality and the imagined Greater Reality is essential if one is to break the stranglehold that the utterly selfish Eastern spiritual teachings have had in all aspects of one’s thinking about the Human Condition, the universe and what it is to be a human being. It is such an exciting exploration to discover the facts of what it is to be a human being as opposed to being a mere mouther of everyone else’s Truths and psittacisms.

GARY: You, Peter, have had a very unique and extremely revealing look at the whole process of a religion forming from the ground up. You have seen firsthand the violence connected with religious life and the stupid posturings of the Enlightened Ones. Your turning away from the spiritual rat race and where you are at in life now should be extremely valuable to those who are disillusioned too with the Glory and Glitz of Enlightenment. I too saw the shenanigans that religious people, including myself formerly, get up to, and had enough. I jumped ship from the Quakers and jumped right on the Krishnamurti bandwagon, and the whole process repeated itself. I was naturally aghast when the whole thing repeated itself. My spiritual pride would not allow me to admit that I had been so wrong about many things.

Actual Freedom and autonomy has to be earned by stubborn and persistent effort – it is not granted by grace to the meek and mild.

Yet religious doctrine preaches that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’. Meekness is an outward form of behaviour that religious people adopt, but they are just as violent in their ‘heart’ because the ‘heart’ (not the pumping organ in our chests) is the seat of our emotional life and the savage and tender passions hold sway there. To be spiritual is really, I think, to be lazy. You pray to God for deliverance and redemption. You actually think that someone or something else can clean up the mess that human beings, that you, have made of the world. This approach is all totally wrong. I have to clean up the mess myself through stubborn and persistent effort. It is not going to be done for me by some Divine Being or God Incarnate. I need to put on my hip boots and wade right into that smelly mess head on and take a good long look at what it is about for myself. 7.11.2000

PETER: Getting back to your question about a common denominator amongst the people seriously following actualism, I see the quality of stubbornness or bloody-mindedness as vital. So far, some people have taken an interest in actualism to a certain point where some change has happened in their lives and then backed away from further pursuits.

GARY: Maybe that is in part what I am going through with this fear that I am experiencing – fear of the consequences of being actually free. At this point, however, it does not feel like it is ‘too much’ for me, but there are times when I wonder if I can handle anymore. But I have the sense that it is too late to turn back and that I cannot turn back anymore. I have made major progress recently by severing my ties to AA and the spiritual program of AA.

I can see now that I was straddling the line. It became more and more difficult and even downright impossible to maintain an affiliation with an organization with an avowed spiritual purpose. I was not being honest with myself by thinking that I could occasionally attend meetings ‘for support’ yet remain aloof from the evangelizing and propaganda. More and more, I felt like an impostor. Religious indoctrination is very subtle. It permeates 12 Step organizations like AA. It even permeates social work, as I am finding out. When you begin to jettison spiritual values, you find that you don’t have much in common with spiritual people anymore. To question them about this is to often incur their considerable wrath, as they regard as heresy any meaningful attempt to look into the stranglehold that spiritual, mystical, and religious thinking has in these areas.

PETER: The spiritual path is the pursuit of emotional events and altered states, whereas the path to Actual Freedom is the pursuit of irrevocable actual change. For an actualist, the real work is in having the courage to maintain an ongoing awareness of how you are experiencing being alive, of cultivating a naïve fascination with being alive and developing a resounding YES to being here.

GARY: It seems that people on a religious and/or (these words are interchangeable) spiritual path are always caught up in their feeling of uniqueness or different-ness from ordinary ‘worldly’ people. When I was into the spiritual lifestyle, I always had a sense of mission or a feeling of being special compared to the average heathens around me.

Take most Christian people, for instance, with their ingrained persecution complex – it seems to me that they are always looking to be persecuted by others, and are rarely cognizant of their self-righteous, pious attitude towards ‘non-believers’ and their downright persecutory attitude towards others who are not members of their little coterie. 15.11.2000

PETER: Becoming free of the human condition means what it means. To step out of Humanity is to no longer be a member of any exclusive club, to hold no truths as sacred or holy, to cherish no beliefs, to have no precious feelings, to nurse no malice or sorrow in one’s bosom.

GARY: I had a long talk with my partner, explaining that I am no longer attending AA and my reasons for not doing so. It was an opportunity to explain the things that I am doing and the changes that are occurring. I found that she understood exactly why I no longer wish to attend AA and why I feel that to continue to do so is holding me down. She said that she honestly could never see me drinking again. She never knew me when I was drinking and taking drugs, we having met while I was already off drugs and alcohol. AA is an exclusive club, but I never saw that before because I wanted to belong to a club; I felt I needed it.

Yesterday I stepped into the AA club in the town where I work to speak for awhile with a client who works there. I have not been back there for quite awhile. I felt apprehensive about going in there. It felt a bit like walking into the Lion’s Den. AA is so spiritual, through and through, and it is impossible for me now to conform to any kind of spiritual viewpoint. It is interesting that in the United States, our state courts and appeals courts have consistently upheld the legal finding that AA is a religious organization and that to force people to attend AA, as is frequently done with people who are prison inmates or on probation in the legal system, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of our Constitution (pertaining to the separation between church and state) and is hence unconstitutional. Yet attendance at AA is the sacred cow of our alcoholism and drug treatment system. There is little or nothing else on offer here but the spiritual Pablum of the 12-step programs.

PETER: It took me 17 years of exploration on the so-called spiritual path to finally understand, acknowledge, and act upon, the fact that spiritualism was nothing other than ‘Olde-Time Religion’. Every pundit, teacher or follower I met or group I was in felt they were unique or that they were specially ‘chosen’ in having the truth of their existence revealed to them personally. Spiritual revelations and experiences are music to ‘me’, as soul, and inevitably lead to ‘self’-ish introspection and an increased detachment from actuality.

GARY: My experience of religious and spiritual groups was just that it was more of the same-same in human affairs and interactions: in other words, the same people vying for position and power, the same coercion by the group on how to think and behave, the same dynamics of leader-follower, etc. I don’t know now what I thought would be different. Religion promises but does not deliver. I wanted at one point to immerse myself in a monastery where my life would be moulded and controlled for me by others.

The process in the religious/ spiritual world of subjecting oneself to a Power or Powers and the earthly representatives of that power has its’ analogy in the work world with its’ hierarchy and office politics.

*

PETER: All religion is founded on fear and there is nothing like whipping up a bit of persecution to rally the faithful to protect the faith. I wrote about my experience in Rajneeshpuram in Oregon when Rajneesh had goaded the Christians to such an extent that the National Guard was evidently on alert. Any persecution, be it real or imaginary, demands justice or, to call a spade a spade, revenge and retribution. One of the most blatant cases of this endless cycle is to be found in the current Israel-Palestinian war. The Israelis, having suffered persecution in WW2 seem now to have found an outlet for revenge – to forcibly occupy Palestinian land, drive the owners out, encircle them in enclaves, forbid them to leave and cut off essential supplies. Then, when those who are occupied revolt, the persecutors claim ten eyes for every eye lost. And common wisdom has it that we should be tolerant of, and respect, people’s religious/ spiritual beliefs.

GARY: I am pretty clear about religion being founded on fear. What I have observed in myself is that any inclination to reach beyond what is palpable and physical into some imaginary realm or seek Divine help, in other words, any religious element arising in the mind is always related to an underlying fear. One can easily observe fear and what goes on with it in one’s life. What is not entirely clear to me is that identity in any form has been causing all the mischief in the human world down through the ages. Of course, it follows that identity is founded on the instincts, the rudimentary sense of being. But there is something about it that I cannot quite make the connection. I think I shall have to continue to investigate this ‘to death’, so to speak, in order to see it more clearly. It would follow from this that whenever there is conflict with other human beings, and I don’t mean a mere difference of opinion or different way of looking at things, but an active sense of being at each other’s throats, identity and instinct must be behind it.

These are fascinating opportunities to investigate into in order to understand what makes one tick as human being. Recently, we had an election in the USA, and the results of that election are being hotly debated and legally challenged by the political aspirants. The entire thing seems so volatile to me. Passions are running high here. There were clips on the television of Republicans storming the polling places where the votes were being recounted. Again in all this we come back to the powder keg of passionate feeling, whether it be political loyalties or for a particular religion or sect. it is all productive of misery and mayhem. One is wise to side-step passionate feeling in any form.

PETER: Having a good clear-eyed look at Humanity is an essential aspect of actualism for ‘I’ am Humanity and Humanity is ‘me’. When it becomes so blatantly obvious that it is human beings stubbornly maintaining and faithfully defending their sacred religious/ spiritual beliefs who cause such horrendous wars and conflicts in the world, it behoves you to rid yourself of every last skerrick of such beliefs – provided you are interested in peace on earth, that is.

GARY: I am not sure it all comes down to defending religious beliefs. I am not anti-religion. I do not want to be anti anything. Were I to take up a militant atheism that gets at the throats of religious people, it would be having another axe to grind, I would be committing the same mistake the religious folks do. It is belief, spurred by the sense of identity and being, and that in turn is related to instincts, that seems to be the culprit.

Anything that human beings latch on to with ‘religious’ devotion is a potential source of warfare and violence, and that is true of political parties, nationalism (obviously), race, gender, etc., etc. It all seems to boil down again to identity, that sense of ‘me’, that this is ‘me’ and that is ‘you’. People sugar-coat and cover up this underlying sense of separation through religious beliefs and injunctions, particularly the ‘we are all one’ feeling. But anything that people feel passionately about is productive of disorder, separation, and in its’ worst manifestation, overt violence. 29.11.2000

PETER: This was not the spiritual Truth I was reading, but the facts of how to become free of the Human Condition. My life-long longing for peace on earth meant I could not turn away – this was an opportunity to be seized with both hands. I needed to find out not only for myself, but for the many others I knew who longed for peace on earth, whether this worked or not.

GARY: If one person could become free from the Human Condition, maybe, just maybe, I can too. I have had to determine for myself if what Richard is talking about is indeed the genuine article, no small task for one living in the Human Condition. Not having met him, nor the rest of you, I can only determine this through the written words in the books, the writings, and on this list. In a recent post I expressed my doubts about it all, and also the fear that the words seemingly inspired. One other sense that I had, which I have from time to time, is that the whole thing is an elaborate hoax. At one time, I (early on I think) I even imagined Richard laughing his ass off at me, a damn fool, buying his pitch. This is, I think, an indication that one is approaching the Actual Freedom writings on the basis of trust and faith , rather than simply whether they make sense or not. At this later point, it is difficult for me to understand the state of mind of those who think that Richard is forcing them to adopt his ‘viewpoint’ (which it is not), because it has never been my experience that he is forcing anyone to do anything. If one wishes to remain miserable, sorrowful, and malicious, then that is the end of the matter.

But for those who are vitally interested in an Actual Freedom from the Human Condition, he, and the others on this list for that matter too, are more than accommodating in his/their writings. One cannot approach Actual Freedom on the basis of faith and trust, but that is probably exactly what spiritual seekers will do, imagining this to be some kind of cult or new religion. Since the spiritual search is all about faith and trust, with spiritual seekers eagerly lapping up the most absurd notions spoon fed to them by the God-men and God women, it is not surprising that spiritual seekers will impose their background of belief on Actual Freedom, turning it into some kind of religion, or turn Richard into some kind of Guru. 15.12.2000

PETER: And finally, just a comment about the extent and influence of spiritual belief within the human condition. I have oft said that the real world and the spiritual world are so intertwined that it is almost impossible to separate them. Humanity literally drips with spirituality, be it the influence of recognized Eastern or Western religions, be it the Pantheism that drives the animal and earth worship of Environmentalism, be it the many and varied morals, ethics and spiritual values of differing tribal groups or be it the general overwhelming agreement that human beings are foremost feeling beings sharing a common spirit-ual linkage. Within the human condition there has been, up until now, only one alternative to being normal and that was to be a seeker on the spiritual path – which is why it is the dissatisfied-with-the-real-world, spiritual seekers who are the most likely be interested in actualism.

GARY: I used to believe that ‘we are spiritual beings having a human experience’. Now I see that we are human beings having very, very real human experiences. And it sucks. The only way out of this besides either getting permanently stoned out of your mind, committing suicide, or following the traditional path of spiritual Enlightenment, is to discover the actual. And as it has been said many times before, the actual is right here right under our noses 100% of the time. Given what you have said about the intertwinement of the normal Real world and the Spiritual World, it would seem that the Real world and the Spiritual World are synonymous, and that ‘normal’ people are ‘spiritual’ and do subscribe to ‘spiritual values’. I used to wonder what was meant by the phrase ‘spiritual values’, and now I see that what is meant is Faith, Trust, Hope, Belief. These are all spiritual beliefs and values and these are things that valued, from what I can tell, by every human being that I have encountered. I have yet to encounter a human being that would tell you to abandon Hope. 11.1.2001

PETER: As a child I was able to see the folly of following One-God religions, if only for the fact that the quandary of which God was the True God and which Gods were false Gods has produced almost continuous religious wars and conflicts. Then I got sucked into following a Godman’s promise of joining a community or Sangha that would bring peace on earth. When the experiment failed, as was inevitable, I began to see that the famed spiritual path was nothing other than olde-time religion.

GARY: Realizations still seem important to me. One of the realizations I had recently, after all the business of quitting my job, was that spiritual values, or spiritual-type thinking still has a hold on me. I still have within me, probably from hundreds of thousands of years of conditioning, the tendency to think of myself as a flawed ‘sinner’, which results in considerable ‘self’-castigation and ‘self’-loathing. I thought I saw this rather clearly in operation when I was filled with ‘self’-recriminations and ‘self’-criticism after leaving the job. I measure myself to an impossible standard of perfection, and naturally do not measure up and then berate myself most strenuously. I literally flagellate myself. It is, I think, a hangover from my spiritual days. It is form of behaviour which characterizes spiritual believers who blame themselves when they do not measure up to the impossible standards of their chosen spiritual teachings. I observed myself doing the same thing with actualism. Turning it into some kind of Almighty system that I had to measure myself against and then berating myself because I didn’t measure up. It is something that was quite literally operating in my own psyche and not something that I have picked up from actualism. This is, I think an important insight, and I have caught myself up to the same shenanigans from time to time since then and I am quicker on the uptake this time. So, I think I am still extricating myself from the spiritual world, even though I do not hold any blatant spiritual beliefs, I do still have spiritual-like thinking and behaviour which causes me to berate myself mercilessly. I’m about sick of it and want something better for myself. 4.2.2001

PETER: Whenever someone dared to share the reality of their own lives they would be reminded by other group members that they are not in fact human beings but that who they really are is Divine spirits. Whenever someone began to despair of the human condition they were reminded that peace on earth is ultimately impossible and one’s only hope is to seek solace in the hope of an other-worldly paradise.

GARY: And what you mention here: ‘to seek solace in the hope of an other-worldly paradise’, in other words, the despisal of life on earth, the despisal of being a human being, the hatred of this flesh-and-blood body and other flesh-and-blood bodies and even this physical universe has been a spur to violence and mayhem for countless hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, we have the priest blessing the battleship, the minister exhorting the troops massed for battle, and the dying words of millions ‘I am going to a better place than this’. If these examples seem too extreme, one need only consider that the logical outcome of the view that ‘peace on earth is ultimately impossible’ is the very destruction of life on earth. But spiritual people and spiritual leaders are more cunning than that, and they will make a great show of being concerned about peace – thus, spiritual people will have ‘prayer-ins’ for peace, involve themselves in peace movements, lobbying against defence expenditures, marches for peace, etc. All these collective activities make people feel that they are doing something to bring about peace on earth, but the upshot of it all is that the root cause of war and violence has not been uncovered and addressed – the Human Condition. Not to mention the fact of the violence inherent in these so-called ‘peaceful’ activities.

PETER: What an utter blind fool I had been, but then again ... once you are hooked into the spiritual world – it’s very tough to get out of.

GARY: I can well relate to your period of discipleship and the bizarreness of your complete immersion in the spiritual community. While perhaps I did not go to some of the extremes that you did, I can easily relate to the emotion of devotion, and unquestioning obedience of the Master, and the complete suspension of intelligent and critical thinking that goes along with being a religious and spiritual follower. And one can well see, given the reverence with which spiritual figures are treated, how Jonestowns and Wacos are possible, no...not only possible, but almost inevitable. The descent into madness begins, I think, when one ties their fate with another – the spiritual leader – one develops a love for, an admiration of the one leading the spiritual community, and the die is cast when Cupid strikes his arrow into the heart because this type of love and veneration is lethal ... witness the many object lessons that the long and bloody history of religion have to show us. To tie one’s fate to any other human being is to be deluded...and peace on earth can scarcely come to one so deluded. It may seem like I am bashing spirituality, but it is like a breath of fresh air to be free from all the ridiculous beliefs and practices which characterize the spiritual world. I still, at times, cannot believe my own complete foolishness in being sucked into it all, and I sometimes cannot believe that it was actually me that believed in all those nonsensical propositions. It is a wonderful experience – being free from the spiritual world, realizing that one need not suspend their own native intelligence for the sake of the apparent security of religious/ spiritual practice. I still am rather overjoyed that I am free from all of that. 20.2.2001

PETER: I remember the feeling of freedom from spiritual belief as being very tangible – I walked taller in the world, as it were, my integrity restored. I remember thinking afterwards – what was all the fuss about? Why did I find it so difficult?

GARY: I still sometimes find when the going gets rough, i.e. during periods of anxiety or dread, that there is a slight stirring of the old spiritual beliefs, usually in the form of wanting to pray for deliverance or guidance. I experienced this in fact yesterday when I became greatly confused and anxious – I was aware of a desire to pray as a way of getting out of it all – kind of like taking a drink for relief. At that point, I just remained aware of what was going on, and began focusing more on this feeling of anxiety I was experiencing.

Eventually, through bringing attention and awareness to the feelings and emotions that were storming inside me, the anxiety wore itself out, and I was much calmer. This morning, as I was preparing my usual cup of coffee, I became aware that in the past month or so, my intake of caffeine has been sharply increased, so much so in fact that I am wondering if that may be part of the reason I am experiencing anxiety. Caffeine has been a trigger for me in the past and it is an insidious kind of thing – it kind of sneaks up on me without my realizing it. So I am planning on cutting down on the coffee and see what happens.

PETER: In hindsight, there were in fact two intertwined difficulties. One was ‘my’ passions involved in maintaining my beliefs – mainly pride and loyalty – and these passions then conspired to prevent me from clearly understanding what was on offer in actualism, a condition known as cognitive dissonance. My brain had been programmed so completely to accept that there were only two alternatives to human existence – grim reality and a Greater Reality – so much so that it was almost impossible to conceive that peace and freedom lay where no one had dared to look before. Right here, right now, on earth.

GARY: I never clearly conceived that there were only two alternatives to human existence, until I was introduced to the third. Now it makes sense but I never thought of it that way before. The underlying passions, whether they be fear, confusion, dread, terror, etc, that fuel spiritual belief are laid bare and exposed when one chucks their spiritual beliefs. So much so that the underlying feelings that made up the reason for the beliefs in the first place are experienced much more directly and intimately than before. Now they are out in the open where you can get at them, so to speak. And there is nothing else to do, and nowhere to go but to pick up the tools and dig into them. The solution offered by spiritual approaches – life on the basis of faith, belief, and trust – are a sop to the anxiety, horror, and despair of living in the grim reality of normal human existence. They do work, in the limited sense that they make people feel better – they are tranquillisers that calm the feelings and ‘sooth the soul’. I think it is only when one sees very clearly that they do not alleviate malice and sorrow, but just cover it up, that one begins to look around for an alternative – then it becomes plain that they don’t work – not that they really did to begin with. 5.3.2001

GARY: Welcome to the list. Your introduction post stimulated me to think about the beginning of my interest in actualism, and the inception of my participation on this list. I thought a few words might be in order.

RESPONDENT No. 30: I’m No. 11, from Toronto. I’m a Christian. I’m 50. My heart is beating slowly, but strongly right now. I’m excited because I’ve thought there was more to this process of ‘growing up’ than I’d found and now I think maybe I’ve found it, with you.

GARY: When I first encountered Richard’s writings while I was participating in the Krishnamurti Listening-L forum, something about them made me stand up and take notice. Here, for a change, was a clear enunciation of the root causes of malice and sorrow in the primitive animal instincts, instincts which we human beings share in common with other sentient creatures. But besides being just an exceptionally clear explication of the fundamental causes of malice and sorrow, here was a concrete, practical explanation of and method by which something could be done about it. At that time, my interest in the writings of Krishnamurti, which had reached a devotional pitch, had already begun to wane. I cannot really say what was the cause of my disenchantment with this Enlightened figure, but the cracks in the structure began to appear, and once they began, there was no stopping them. I was increasingly unable to understand what other people on the list were talking about – it sounded like so much spiritual mumbo-jumbo. The last straw seemed to be when, in discourse with one die-hard follower of Krishnamurti and contemporary Listening-L participant, I was being pressed into the mould of a cultic conformity. Had the cracks not appeared at an earlier juncture, the break would not have been so sudden.

In a collateral recent post, Peter described what often precedes an investigation into actualism. He said:

‘A common thread was a dissatisfaction with the pseudo peace of the spiritual world – the sham of the talk and feelings of ‘we are all one’ vs. the actuality of the selfishness, divisiveness and isolationism of all religious/ spiritual fantasies.’ Peter to Gary, 9.4.2001

That is certainly true in my case. There was increasing dissatisfaction with the conformity of religious/spiritual belief, and with the smugness of many believers, including myself. There were also revealing glimpses into the pandemonium within religions and cults, although I could not at the time quite connect that belief was the cause of this interpersonal conflict and fractiousness. I continued to listen...and I continued to learn. When I approached this list, I was still hanging on to the tattered remnants of a belief system based on hope, trust, devotion, and belief. Some of the things that were said on this list grated me. While I truly wanted to find a way to end malice and sorrow, I mistakenly thought I might also be able, at the same time, to hold on to my spiritual convictions. Continued reading of actualism literature and discussion with others effectively continued the demolition job on whatever few remaining beliefs I had in the ‘power of prayer’, the leadings and teaching of Divine figures (including, and in my case, especially Jesus Christ), and the whole host of nonsensical and fantastical metaphysical beliefs and fantasies that pass for the New Age stable of ‘spiritualities’.

I can only paraphrase what others told me when I joined this list: that to seriously take on actualism as a method for bringing to an end malice and sorrow, one needs to demolish and eliminate one’s spiritual values. At first, this involves determined investigation into one’s spirituality. For me personally, this involved questioning my belief in prayer, my devotion to the supposed ‘Son of God’, my sense of being on a mission which involved spreading God’s Divine Love throughout the world, and the credence I had put in various Holy Scriptures, including some popular supposedly ‘channelled’ works from disembodied entities. Not surprisingly perhaps, some of the first posts on this list when I joined had to do with the belief in these disembodied entities.

Like a hammer, this list and the writings of the people on this list, continued to pound away at the spiritual edifice I had built up over the years. But the interesting thing is that, once weakened, the entire structure came toppling down so suddenly and so completely. There were two things that I experienced following my abandonment of spirituality and religion. One the one hand there was an enormous sense of freedom and relief to finally be rid of all the absurd rituals and routines, the self-delusion and clouded judgement, and to be finally able to see clearly without the blinders of belief. But I will not underestimate the daunting nature of this venture, because the other thing I experienced was a fear of Divine Punishment or eternal damnation. Religious conditioning had left me with a fear of striking out on my own and an inner fear that, should I abandon God, I would suffer the torments of hell. Notwithstanding that a very tumultuous and painful period of my life coincided with a period of militant atheism, I was afraid that I was going from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.

I well remember the period of time after I chucked belief in God, Jesus Christ, religion, and even Alcoholics Anonymous. There was quite a bit of fear, a dread fear of the consequences. I was afraid I would go right off the rails. I also had the fear that I was losing my mind, a fear that I had had at previous periods of my life. Further correspondence with others on this list, reading about the actualist method of investigating fear, probing into my own fears and dread, and taking the approach of sitting in these fears and experiencing them, neither suppressing nor expressing them – all this work culminated in a full-blown PCE (Pure Consciousness Experience). There have been other PCEs along the way, and many, many days in which I am bothered by nothing in particular – no stormy emotions are troubling my mind and ‘heart’, and my physical surroundings have taken on a vibrant, pulsating, rich quality.

I do not need the pacifier of religious/spiritual belief any more. Interestingly, while shopping for a desk chair in the office supply outlet yesterday, I ran into a woman who was a member of a religious group I once belonged to. I said ‘hello’, chatted briefly, exchanged pleasantries, yet felt no feeling of aversion or regret. She stated that the group ‘missed me’ and that she must return some religious text to me – I said ‘Don’t worry about it’, goodbye, and was on my way. I am glad to be rid of all the foolishness of religion and spirituality, glad to be rid of all the ridiculous and absurd dogmas, doctrines, and rituals. I can count in a hundred ways how the demolishment of my spiritual values and spiritual beliefs have left me free to be here now. I can only highly recommend an active investigation into one’s own religious and spiritual beliefs ... it may well be the end of fantasy and delusion, and the emergence of the Actual world of this vibrant, living, and eternal physical universe. 13.4.2001

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