Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List

with Correspondent No 3

14.6.1999

Hi,

Good to hear from you again. I was sitting back the other day wondering what you were making of LeDoux’ research and the schematic we did of the brain’s circuitry. I do like what the practical scientists are discovering about the brain’s functioning and the role of instincts on human emotions and behaviour. Of course, there will be a limit as to what they will risk saying about their research as both ethical reputations and funding will be at risk, but the ‘tide’ will turn one day. Even the Popes had to eventually give up insisting that the sun went around the earth – ‘because the Book says so’. It did take about four centuries – I seem to recall that the Vatican only recently tidied up the paperwork on the issue.

The other point is that the findings will not only be ignored and misinterpreted by both lay and professional people, they will be deliberately twisted and perverted in order to maintain the enormous vested interests of the Ancient Wisdom Business. It will be fascinating to watch the twists and turns, the ethical and moral arguments that ensue. Already we have seen the banning of genetic ‘meddling’ which could have eliminated inherited diseases and abnormalities because ‘we can’t play God’. So the suggestion that we deliberately set out to eliminate all feelings, self and our survival instincts is not going to be popular consumption for a goodly while. It is so radical, so confrontational, so 180 degrees in the opposite direction, that it will take intrepid pioneers and adventurers to be the first ones to journey out from the Human Condition.

It has only now become possible to become free of the Human Condition because of the extraordinary change that has occurred in the last 40 or so years, as a significant proportion of the population does not now have to fight for survival – be it territory, food, defence, battling rampant diseases or the like.

The actual world is a safe and benign world – we have won the fight over marauding wild animals, we have tamed most deadly plagues, we produce enough food, we enjoy good living standards, but still humans suffer from sorrow and inflict malice on others. The only ‘solution to date for temporary relief from instinctual fear and aggression has been to conjure up ‘good’ feelings of compassion – feeling sad for others – and love – desperately trying to feel good about, and be ‘kind’ to, at least one other person on the planet.

Isn’t it so bloody good, so liberating, to know the reason for sorrow and malice, to not feel guilty about it, to have a method for eliminating the buggers and to get on with the job? To see clearly that the whole instinctual package was only necessary for the survival of the species and that it is now redundant. Not only redundant but plainly lethal in that most of the 160,000,000 that died in wars this century died not fighting for survival but for passionate feelings such as Honour, Country, God, Justice, etc. And all the murders, rapes, tortures, suicides, sadness and despair occur only because of the ‘animal’ still wired within each of us.

What a grand thing to journey out of sadness and fear, spite and envy, deception and confusion – to more and more experience the sensate delights of this very actual world, happening right now. The only way that such a journey is possible is because one is eliminating all that is in the way of experiencing what is actual – the process is one of elimination, not of building a new belief or concept about how to be, how to cope or how to escape from the world as-it-is and people as-they-are. As such, each step on the path is a factual step, a sincere investigation, a fact replacing a belief, with more and more happy and harmless moments replacing fearful, sad or angry ones.

One would not proceed ‘where few have gone before’ without a glimpse of the paradise that this actual world is – a Pure Consciousness Experience. It is not enough to rely on others’ stories, for then it is only yet another belief, and with belief comes doubt, hand in hand, and the subsequent need for trust, hope, and faith. Merely adopting another belief will not instill the necessary pure intent to guide one through the maze of one’s own psyche.

I think I am on a rave again. So back to the BrainBomb web-site whose address you sent. It would seem that many people will use the research on instincts to justify the ‘bad’ in us and continue to flog the old ‘be good – find God’ methods that have relentlessly failed to end suffering and failed to bring peace, despite the sincere efforts of billions upon billions of people. This ‘wishful thinking’ involves nothing more than accentuating and identifying with the so-called good instincts and sublimating and dis-identifying with the ‘bad’ instincts. If one is successful in the effort one becomes totally identified with the Good and in full-blown delusion one can even become God or Cosmic Consciousness, so self-aggrandizing is the exercise in the end.

But given the current research efforts, at very least, the ancient belief in Tabula Rasa will be harder to maintain in the face of scientific fact.

A little definition may be appropriate at this point –

Tabula Rasa – Latin: ‘scraped tablet,’ i.e., ‘clean slate’), in epistemology (theory of knowledge) and psychology, a supposed condition that empiricists attribute to the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects. Comparison of the mind to a blank writing-tablet occurs in Aristotle’s De anima (4^th century BC), and the Stoics as well as the Aristotelian Peripatetics subsequently argued for an original state of mental blankness. Both the Aristotelians and the Stoics, however, emphasized those faculties of the mind or soul that, having been only potential or inactive before receiving ideas from the senses, respond to the ideas by an intellectual process and convert them into knowledge. A new and revolutionary emphasis on the Tabula Rasa occurred late in the 17^th century, when the English empiricist John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), argued for the mind’s initial resemblance to ‘white paper, void of all characters,’ with ‘all the materials of reason and knowledge’ derived from experience. Though Locke himself fell back on ‘reflection’ as a power of the mind for the exploitation of the given ‘materials,’ his championship of the Tabula Rasa signalled even more radical positions by later philosophers. – Encyclopedia Britannica

Vineeto has worked up three more diagrams, based on our initial diagram, showing a schematic representation of the development of the brain’s circuitry and programming at birth, by age 2 to 3 years and at about 7 years. I would emphasize that, while the diagrams are a factual representation of what happens in the initial years of a human’s life, they are purely schematic in neurological terms. They should be treated as guides only, and although we are well aware of the potential for nit-picking abuse and misrepresentation, I personally find them very useful in order to make sense of the functioning of that extraordinary organ, the human brain. Maybe it is my training as an architect but I do like a good visual plan or a diagram. I think you will also find them useful and informative.

So, the first one is the brain at birth –

As can be seen from the diagram and readily observed in new-born babies, the neo-cortex is largely unprogrammed and, I understand, still forming and growing for a while after birth. The Amygdala comes with a genetically-implanted, instinctual self, ready and primed to develop. This primitive self we share with our closest genetic ‘cousins’, the primates, and a self has been well documented in both chimpanzees and apes. This primitive self is part and parcel of the survival instincts – they are an integral package. The instinct is first and foremost for the survival of the species, hence the willingness of the adult to sacrifice his or her own life for the offspring. A close second comes self-survival, the survival of one’s self – a physical-only act in non-cognitive animals which is translated into psychic and psychological fear and aggression in humans. In a new-born, this survival instinct is obviously instantly functioning as is evidenced in the instinctual action of sucking – neither lessons nor any encouragement are needed. It is hard to conceive that there are no pre-natal emotional memories stored in the Amygdala of a new-born baby. Medical evidence of the transmission of narcotics and other chemical substances to the foetus through the mother’s placenta would very strongly suggest that emotionally-sourced chemical substances also are transferred. Thus the foetus would be experiencing the effect of these substances that are the tangible physical evidence of fear, aggression, excitement, sadness and the like.

The emotional-chemical pattern is set, the pump is primed, and the baby’s emotional memory has a preview of life in the world into which it will soon emerge.

To insist on the belief in Tabula Rasa in the face of these facts, all easily observable by anyone willing to look with both eyes, is to bury one’s head in the sand. Human beings will do anything but admit that we are but animals ‘at heart’, that indeed what we share with animals is our instinctual passions and emotions – fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

Our dearly held feelings and emotions – the same feelings witnessed in animals, are the cause of all the malice and sorrow, violence and despair, and we come pre-wired, at birth, to be animal at heart .

Moving on to the second in the series – By the age of about 2 to 3 years we have a fully functioning circuitry in action. In the amygdala sufficient events have occurred, sufficient water has flowed through the ‘pump’ – to flog a metaphor – for the emotional memory to be fully functioning and active. Emotional responses and reactions which have their roots in memories of past events, people and places are clearly observed in infants at this age. This is not due to a loss of any mythical innocence but simply the result of the functioning of the brain’s circuitry – it is the way ‘blind nature’ has programmed sentient beings in order to facilitate survival. The other observable functioning is that of a psychological self – the ‘me, me’ pleading being most evident. A stubborn wilfulness, a selfishness becomes a prime feature of the infant at this age. The emergence of a distinct self coincides with increased mobility, socialisation and independence from parental dependency, as would be expected. The supposed innocence of babyhood, due to the unformed cognitive faculties and rudimentary-only emotional responses are a thing of the past – the parents now have an almost fully functional emotional-being on their hands – hence the term ‘quite a handful’.

The last in the series documents a further significant stage of development usually occurring around 7 years of age – With the development of speech, increased socialisation, peer group pressure and teachers’ and parental ‘guidance’ we see the emergence of a social identity. Instilled by reward and punishment, ‘carrot and stick’, the child is taught what is considered good and what is considered bad. Instruction and programming of morals, ethics, values, beliefs and psittacisms are necessary to keep the lid on the instinctual passions and to make one a fit member of the family and of society at large. One is told that it is ‘time to grow up’, ‘it’s time you learned how to behave properly’ and ‘you’re old enough to know better’. These core values, this identity, will be with one for life, with only very slight adjustments made. A period of rebellion can often arise from this imposition but ‘when push comes to shove’ the child will invariably fall back into line or simply ‘grow up’. Thus the picture is almost complete with only adolescence bringing a further pre-programmed change. With the kick-in of the reproductive instincts at puberty, there comes a certain seriousness, a degree of responsibility, that becomes readily apparent; no doubt an integral part of the package of procreation. For with the ability to father or mother comes the instinctual willingness to accept the responsibility involved. So that’s it. The now-teenager usually hangs around home a bit longer and away he or she goes, launched into the world, programmed to battle it out for survival, come what may. In my case it was such a shock to enter the real ‘adult’ world all by myself. I remember thinking ... ‘Is this it?’

But the serendipitous thing was that my father’s advice came back to haunt me. ‘Be Happy’ was his only real advice to me, and although he couldn’t tell how, the bells did ring when I met Richard.

Good, hey.

Well, I hope you enjoy the diagrams. You probably have read all this stuff before but I wanted to also take the opportunity to post the schematics on the list with a bit of an explanation. It’s so good to make sense of this business of being a human being, to swap stories, share discoveries, and to get to write a post to someone on the other side of the world – a few mouse clicks and ...

And it’s back to the drawing board for me ...

23.6.1999

I’m finally getting around to replying to your post – I’m working to ‘feed’ my computer at the moment as well as myself so I’ve been busy at the drawing board.

Actually about this amygdala and brain business – I am more interested in a complete overview showing how the amygdala interacts with the discrete components and how the method is changing it. For example, does the neo-cortex weak link back to the amygdala strengthen with successive interactions with strong emotions? How do the components change and what happens to the obsolete ones?

Well, we did have a chat about what was happening but found ourselves involved in speculating and imagining, so we gave up on the exercise. When I get a bit more time we will possibly put out a simple ‘Actual Freedom diagram’, but as to what the neuro-biological changes are and what happens in the brain, I suspect it will be others who discover and map the science of it. It also could be that we never know, as it may be in the same league as asking why the neo-cortex developed in the first place? The physical universe, as one of its more intriguing qualities, has the propensity to develop towards increasing refinement, utility and intelligence, and the individual human’s ability to free the neo-cortex from the animal instinctual survival mode is at the current cutting edge of this ever on-going development.

And it’s bloody good to be on the bus to freedom.

If there is a working model and an understanding of the main function of each component then I think it would be possible to extrapolate to create a rough picture of what happens.

The ‘working model’ we have for the process, at this stage, is Richard, and given his little ‘detour’ of finding himself in an Altered State of Consciousness as opposed to a pure consciousness state for some 11 years, his ‘picture of what happens’ is a bit distorted. There is, however, no doubt that Richard can report reliably on the end result of the process – the complete and utter extinction of both the psychological and psychic self – and that this extinction results in the complete elimination of the instinctual passions. Those currently following in his footsteps and utilizing his method are avoiding the delusion of an Altered State of Consciousness and, as such, their discoveries, experiences and writings give an accurate picture of the process in operation.

I also must admit to a lack of curiosity as to ‘how’ it all happens – I am more interested in the fact that it is now possible for it to happen. Of even more vital interest is that it is happening to me – that I can be free of the instinctual animal passions of malice and sorrow that accompany the self – the alien entity within this flesh and blood body.

I watched a television interview with Douglas Adams – the author of the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’. I pricked up my ears when he said that the major issue that human beings are presently facing was the ‘battle between instincts and intelligence’. But within a few sentences he was proclaiming the popularist belief that ‘our survival is threatened by our instinctual behaviour in that we are wiping out endangered species and that only intelligent action will save us’. Not a word about our instinctual behaviour towards each other, such as war, rape, torture, genocide, murder ... let alone despair, depression, loneliness, suicide ...

So, the facts about instincts can, and will, be denied, avoided, ignored or twisted by those unwilling to face the facts and set about changing themselves. It is only those who acknowledge that they feel malicious, murderous, revengeful, resentful, sad, depressed, lonely, despairing, etc., – and want to do something about it – who will be interested in Actual Freedom.

Now that the neuro-biological scientific evidence is becoming available, it will be up to each of us what we do with it – whether we continue to ignore or escape from it, or get up off our bums and do something.

The main interest for me in LeDoux’s findings was that instinctual fear was sourced in the primitive brain and that the primitive brain was the quickest to react. The ‘quick and dirty’ instinctual response then overwhelms the modern brain – a ‘hose pipe’ connection from the amygdala to the neo-cortex compared to a ‘drinking straw’ the other way. This explained my feelings of being overwhelmed by rage, anger, sadness, despair or loneliness in my lifetime and it explains the more subtle feelings that constantly served to ruin my happiness. It makes it glaringly obvious that, no matter how ‘good’ or well intentioned ‘I’ am, it is factually impossible to be free of malice and sorrow unless I am free of the instinctual animal programming in its entirety.

So, I see that LeDoux is very good news for we actualists.

2.5.2000

At the end of one of Vineeto’s posts –

Just a P.S. from me that might be useful.

I found writing is an excellent way of holding on to or not losing those ‘flashes’ . The action of writing, labelling, a bit of subsequent contemplation and exploring, can build on and deepen those important flashes, very often into life-altering realizations. I ran a personal jotting notebook which I found most useful and I would have it by my side when contemplating. It is also an invaluable companion while you are having a PCE as you can glean much information which may fade with memory of the PCE afterwards. This way, afterwards you can read back and see what it was that you realized while free of it all. I also found reading Richard’s journal to be excellent – just a passage or two and then a stretch back for a bit of a muse about what was written, a jot in the note book and who knows what might happen?

What I am suggesting is a little game plan – maybe settle for one particular issue that you want to crack through – and you’ll probably know which one – and then establish a method that suits you and that enables you to comfortably abandon caution and slip a little deeper. Supplement your investigations with writing, observing, reading other viewpoints, etc – do anything necessary to focus your attention on the issue at hand. What I found was once I had success with one issue the next one would come swanning along by itself.

The other comment I would make is about working. During most of the time when I was investigating and digging deep into emotions I was working supervising a building site. I found it a rich field in which to observe and label feelings and emotions as they arose and I focussed on several consecutive major issues that arose at work and found that I was able to eliminate them to the point that both my enjoyment level and efficiency level increased. There is a lot to be said for testing oneself out in the market place for the immediate aim is to be happy and harmless in the world as it is with people as they are.

Good to hear from you. You seem to be having great fun.

15.5.2000

I have only a general game plan so far and it goes like this.

• Try to get into bare awareness. This means setting up a habit of questioning the habit of ‘me’ in the drivers seat. ‘How am I....’ Does a fine job at this and I/ it can even overcome any problems with asking the question in the first place. Self though must learn to ask the question remembering that the pain of emotion belongs to self and not the question. Revealing self will inevitably reveal the pain of self. Remember the undoing of any emotional complex is of great reward and well worth the effort.

• Look and learn, see how the network of ‘me’ hangs together. Give particular attention to those aspects which form the cement of ‘me’ namely emotions and instincts.

The following is New for me:

• Label them and add them to the task list, marked for elimination, in order of priority. Priority is worked out by determining which aspect is most of a problem.

Good to hear from you. You seem to be having great fun.

Indeed, at first when I heard that investigation into ‘me’ would be a wonderful adventure I couldn’t really see how, as emotions are sometimes hard to deal with. With bare awareness in full swing though, everything becomes fuel for a curious mind.

I found an advertisement in the local spiritual magazine that states very clearly the distinction between the spiritual approach to dealing with the emotions arising from morals, ethics, beliefs and animal instinctual passions and that of an actualist. I know there is an enormous amount written on the AF web-site about this subject but every now and again something catches my eye that blatantly exposes the spiritual approach of actively creating a new identity who transcends or rises above the unwanted bad or savage passions.

The advertisement is for a 4-day workshop entitled ‘Dis-identification’ – Letting Go of Self Hatred.

He writes in his introductory section –

As I was driving yesterday, I remembered something that made me feel anger arising – not angry – still far away from me, like you would see a theatre actor getting angry. I know that if I start to get closer to ‘it’, getting identified little by little, soon it will be racing towards me like an avalanche. The feeling of anger will start reaching me, then my jaw will start clenching ... But now is not the case, as long as I don’t identify. An easy way for me is to start feeling receptive, feminine in that moment – pulling, – as I play with the rising anger. Suddenly there is a moment when where I laugh, making a funny face to the thought and the anger, and immediately something else arises like joy and clarity with great power though, getting the energy from the anger that would be. Big insight, BANG! This actually happened. It’s good as an example. The rising feeling can be one of the lot. It starts far away inside of us and if we cannot stay with awareness we will identify and soon we will become that. <Snip> During the work, as if magically, the space inside would start getting bigger and the idea of time getting less. Suddenly in that new time-space, the emotion, the suffering would feel unreal and would drop. Something of the beyond would shine through – Ram, Tibetan Pulsing, Here&Now 5/2000

This description very well describes the spiritual practice of disidentifying from unwanted and undesirable emotions and identifying with the wanted and desirable emotions. The undesirable real-world identity is transcended and a new desirable spiritual identity is created. The newly formed spiritual identity dis-identifies with the old identity and becomes aware of and suppresses, pushes away or ignores the unwanted emotions. This is not a bare awareness operating but an identity splitting itself into two – one good half being aware of the other bad half. To call this action awareness is to misuse the term as the awareness is so selective it would be best termed as occultation or denial. It is this very labelling and judging of feelings and emotions as good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable that prevents an active and equal investigation of all emotions and their instinctual roots.

This is why it is essential to dismantle the morals and ethics we have been instilled with since birth that deem anger a bad thing and that it is wrong to be angry. In the spiritual world, these morals and ethics become even stronger, such that the writer of the passage above cannot even say he is being angry. He uses the term – ‘ feel anger arising ’. Unless one is prepared to investigate the validity and sensibility of moral and ethical standards, any in-depth investigation into one’s own psyche is impossible. It does seem madness to abandon the very glue that appears to keep society safe and keeps a lid on rampant violence and that stops one from running amok.

But three facts clearly indicate a new approach is necessary –

• Firstly the continual failure of moral and ethics to bring anything vaguely resembling peace and harmony to any human interactions and, if one is honest, in one’s own life.
• Secondly, the fact that the self-imposition of morals and ethics – one’s social identity – in reality becomes a straight-jacket that one yearns to be free from.
• Thirdly, we know from our pure consciousness experiences that purity and perfection is possible when ‘me’ and all ‘my’ passions are temporarily absent.

The first point means that the honest seeker of freedom, peace and happiness will not settle for a suppression or transcendence of unwanted or undesirable emotions.

The second point means that the honest seeker of freedom, peace and happiness will not merely swap one set of morals and ethics for another for he or she will be acutely aware that the ‘becoming spiritual’ option is merely adopting another identity and another even more insidious form of entrapment. All people are instilled with spiritual-based morals and ethics and everyone who has sought freedom has developed a spiritual identity to varying degrees which is why the elimination of one’s social identity is the primary focus of an actualist. The clue to morals and ethics in action are feelings such as guilt, shame, embarrassment and resentment on the one hand and pride, piousness, arrogance and condescension on the other. So much conflict, dissension, confusion and obscuration is caused by a stubborn unwillingness to rigorously examine the facticity and effectiveness of the morals, ethics and beliefs we are instilled with since birth. Most of the objections to being happy and harmless on the AF web-site go no deeper than obstinate and superficial objections on the basis of right and wrong, good and bad rather than a mutual discussion based on what is silly and what is sensible, what is belief and what is fact. Only by eliminating one’s social identity can one eliminate the constant flood of minor feelings, emotions and worries thus leaving one free to tackle one’s instinctual being, ‘me’ at my core.

The third point means the pure consciousness experience gives one the knowledge and confidence that not only is it possible to live without the burden of ‘self’-centred instinctual passions, it is essential to do so in order to directly experience the already and always existing peace on earth.

It is interesting to look back on the process and the stages I went through in investigating feelings, emotions and instinctual passions. With each emotion I investigated it was always an essential first step to investigate the goods and bads, the rights and wrongs, and all the things I had been told and thus assumed to be true – my beliefs. I know we keep flogging this aspect but unless one undertakes this process any investigation will be superficial and offer only a temporary relief of the symptoms without ever tackling the underlying cause of the instinctual passions.

What I am suggesting is to be alert to the feelings that arise from one’s instilled morals, ethics, beliefs and values, for these are the first line of ‘self’ defence that needs to be tackled. This is where labelling and making sense of the feelings and emotions is vital for then you can make sense of the apparently arbitrary and chaotic jumble that arises. One begins to see patterns and traits that are common to all human beings and that give rise to the human condition in operation in yourself as well as others. My experience was that these feelings associated with my social identity were the easiest to tackle and the confidence gained from the success in tackling them was fuel for digging deeper – and the freedom gained was deliciously palpable.

23.5.2000

I found an advertisement in the local spiritual magazine that states very clearly the distinction between the spiritual approach to dealing with the emotions arising from morals, ethics, beliefs and animal instinctual passions and that of an actualist. I know there is an enormous amount written on the AF web-site about this subject but every now and again something catches my eye that blatantly exposes the spiritual approach of actively creating a new identity who transcends or rises above the unwanted bad or savage passions.

The advertisement is for a 4-day workshop entitled ‘Dis-identification’ – Letting Go of Self Hatred. <snip>

This description very well describes the spiritual practice of disidentifying from unwanted and undesirable emotions and identifying with the wanted and desirable emotions. The undesirable real-world identity is transcended and a new desirable spiritual identity is created. The newly formed spiritual identity dis-identifies with the old identity and becomes aware of and suppresses, pushes away or ignores the unwanted emotions. This is not a bare awareness operating but an identity splitting itself into two – one good half being aware of the other bad half. To call this action awareness is to misuse the term as the awareness is so selective it would be best termed as occultation or denial. It is this very labelling and judging of feelings and emotions as good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable that prevents an active and equal investigation of all emotions and their instinctual roots.

With morals and ethics firmly in place we also get a double whammy – the physical sensations of chemical surges related to the passions and then the associated bad feelings due to our ethics and morals – anger comes with guilt and shame, love comes with duty, responsibility, resentment and possessiveness, fear comes with withdrawing, denial, false bravado or frustration, desire comes with competitiveness or guilt, etc. This observation is the very key to investigating both the tender and the savage emotions. It is only by making sense of one’s own psyche in action that freedom is at all possible.

Yes and they attempt to bridge this gap by feeling. Thus ‘I’ feel love, ‘I’ feel Oneness, ‘I’ feel sad for you and feel sad with you, etc. Thus ‘I’ stay in existence and the idea of ‘the other’ stays in existence. With the demise of ‘me’ and my feelings the experience that what I am is this flesh and blood body only dissolves this feeling of duality and an actual palpable intimacy becomes apparent with every person you meet and your immediate surrounding.

The failing of this system is that one only feels happy and feels free while the savage instinctual passions lurk around unscathed and uninvestigated – ever able to re-emerge at any time.

Yes, yes. The morals and ethics we have been instilled with since birth are designed to prevent us from taking a clear eyed look at the ‘dark’ side of our instinctual nature. They form the guardian at the gate that prevent one from making a clear-eyed investigation of one’s psyche in action.

Yes, we are taught at childhood to dis-identify with the feelings arising from the savage instinctual passions by regarding them as bad or evil or wrong or not-proper. The spiritual teachings just take this dis-identification to its fundamentalist extreme – thus the priest and the nun are the holiest exactly as the awakened or Enlightened ones are the holiest. To dig into one’s instinctual passions one needs to ‘get down and get dirty’ – not something the good, holy and righteous are at all inclined to do.

*

This is why it is essential to dismantle the morals and ethics we have been instilled with since birth that deem anger a bad thing and that it is wrong to be angry. In the spiritual world, these morals and ethics become even stronger, such that the writer of the passage above cannot even say he is being angry. He uses the term – ‘ feel anger arising’. Unless one is prepared to investigate the validity and sensibility of moral and ethical standards, any in-depth investigation into one’s own psyche is impossible. It does seem madness to abandon the very glue that appears to keep society safe and keeps a lid on rampant violence and that stops one from running amok.

Every tribal grouping has its own set of moral and ethical standards imposed by carrot and stick so as to keep the group together and ensure a reasonable standard of behaviour of members of the group towards each other. These ‘sort-of’ do a reasonable job within the group but other groups with different standards and values are often seen as wrong or bad which gives rise to much conflict. Even within any group the resulting restrictions do nothing but keep the lid on the worst of the covert malice and sorrow.

The ‘good’ No 3 and the ‘right’ No 3 have to step out of the way sufficiently in order that you can see what is really going on in your psyche.

*

But three facts clearly indicate a new approach is necessary –

• Firstly the continual failure of moral and ethics to bring anything vaguely resembling peace and harmony to any human interactions and, if one is honest, in one’s own life.
• Secondly, the fact that the self-imposition of morals and ethics – one’s social identity – in reality becomes a straight-jacket that one yearns to be free from.
• Thirdly, we know from our pure consciousness experiences that purity and perfection is possible when ‘me’ and all ‘my’ passions are temporarily absent. <Snip>

It is interesting to look back on the process and the stages I went through in investigating feelings, emotions and instinctual passions. With each emotion I investigated it was always an essential first step to investigate the goods and bads, the rights and wrongs, and all the things I had been told and thus assumed to be true – my beliefs. I know we keep flogging this aspect but unless one undertakes this process any investigation will be superficial and offer only a temporary relief of the symptoms without ever tackling the underlying cause of the instinctual passions.

What I am suggesting is to be alert to the feelings that arise from one’s instilled morals, ethics, beliefs and values, for these are the first line of ‘self’ defence that needs to be tackled. This is where labelling and making sense of the feelings and emotions is vital for then you can make sense of the apparently arbitrary and chaotic jumble that arises. One begins to see patterns and traits that are common to all human beings and that give rise to the human condition in operation in yourself as well as others. My experience was that these feelings associated with my social identity were the easiest to tackle and the confidence gained from the success in tackling them was fuel for digging deeper – and the freedom gained was deliciously palpable.

I always say that I was happy to be a following pioneer in this enterprise for I was able to pick Richard’s brain, as it were, to discover what he had discovered. Thus I didn’t need to explore every alley, every nuance, every belief, every moral, every belief, and every psittacism. I was able to do this intensively over a period of 12 months, and together with reading his journal many times over, this was sufficient to become virtually free of malice and sorrow. I would suggest that your success will be purely dependant on the time and effort put in to the task. The good thing for you is that the amount of information available now has probably increased 20 fold and it is freely and readily available on the web-site. You still make your own investigations – and who would have it any other way – but a wealth of information is available to help you look at these broader details.

As you seem to be discovering, it is impossible to leap straight into investigating emotions without first looking at the broader details of one’s social identity. This is where the AF Library pages and particularly the selected correspondence related to topics are invaluable as you can focus your attention on understanding one particular issue and come to grips with it. Remember we are talking of a practical re-wiring of the human brain. Our social identity is a way of thinking that has formed synapse connections that mean we automatically think a certain way, exactly as our instinctual passions cause us to automatically feel a certain way.

This rewiring requires persistence, perseverance and repetitive effort – exactly like learning anything new does, except in this case one is unlearning something. Thus one’s success, or not, is exactly proportionate to the amount of time and effort afforded to the task.

I do like your report. Methinks there is a substantial dent in that outer layer happening and it is always good to hear of someone who is putting theory into practice – ‘giving it a go’ is the local vernacular term.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust