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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 37
Hi, I took some time away from the list for a while in order to sort some things out regarding my current attempt at actualism. The main focus I want to operate with now is experiential. It became apparent that some of my ‘clashes’ with some of you have had their roots in my attempted analytical/emotional understanding – rather than tested out in experience – thus, I often treated much of what was said as having implications for me that they just don’t need to have. Although most of the posts on this list are a one-to-one communication, the nature of what is being discussed should be of interest to all and applicable to all. This is because what is being discussed on this list is the human condition of malice and sorrow and how to become free of it. Only by understanding and acknowledging that the human condition is universal to all human beings can one stop being a supporter of the status quo, stop defending the indefensible, stop denying one’s own feelings of malice, stop indulging in one’s own feelings of sorrow and take up the challenge of becoming actually happy and harmless. Anyway, I’d like to invite any and all of you to give your input regarding my reflections – and I say this especially for Vineeto, since I have the sense that you (Vineeto) think that I don’t value your input – I do value your input. My former evaluation of your style was probably too hasty. Speaking personally, I always value the sincerity of input, and matters of style are way down my list. A quick note on an experience I had the other night... I was experiencing some anxiousness about the ‘meaning of life’ and noticed that much of my thoughts revolve around searching for an enduring value or figuring out whether my life has had enough enjoyment – wondering how I would evaluate my life if I were lying on my death bed... when I realized how silly the whole thing was ... why would I spend my final moments reminiscing about the past – which is not even present anyway? I am always somewhat surprised that so few people seem to stop to spend the time to do a bit of stocktaking and re-evaluating as to what they have done and where they are headed. Many of my generation had both the opportunity and time to think about the ‘meaning of life’ and many indeed did begin searching for something better than grim reality and something less shonky and self-indulgent than Olde Time Religion. Unfortunately, most followed fashion and found Eastern religion and that sucked the very life out of them. By becoming believers in Truth, they have become as morally-superior and as intellectually-disingenuous as the countless generations before them who surrendered their will to a mythical God in exchange for a front row seat in an imaginary afterlife. And I can only say this because I too went down that path for a good many years. And the only reason I stopped being a follower and a believer was that I took the time to do some stocktaking and re-evaluating of my life – and I didn’t like what I saw, so I determined to change. Better to make such evaluations now – even if it involves contemplating lying on your deathbed – and make the necessary changes now rather than end up dying in sad regret of never having fully lived. It was strange to recognize that I often spend my time looking for some narrative that ties ‘my’ life together into some meaningful narrative, and I realized that this sort of enterprise is one of the hopeless things that ‘I’ do, since the ‘meaning’ of my life depends upon some interpretation of the events of my life. Who else but you is going to interpret the events of your life and who else but you is going to determine what meaning it should have? There is no one better qualified, or more vitally interested, than you to decide what to do with your life. I know, for me, it was glaringly obvious that if I wanted to become free of the human condition in toto, then the doing of it was up to ‘me’. Then and there I realized experientially, not just intellectually, that this is my only moment of being alive – what a waste to cling to the past or future! Or to try and compose meaningful narratives out of the past and future – any such emotional story is always ‘up for grabs’ and must be defended by the identity. Anyway, it dawned on me that the only reliable meaning one can find is ‘now’ – since that’s all that’s actually here, now. :o) Given that you have asked for input on your reflections, I will offer some suggestions based upon my experience as an actualist. They are only suggestions but you might well find them useful. Whenever I had an experiential realization that this is the only moment I can experience being alive I deliberately made the effort to focus my attention on sensate experiencing, be it hearing the full range of sounds about, smelling the smells of various things, seeing with either soft-focused or investigative eyes, feeling with the whole of one’s skin or the touch of the finger and taking the time to savour the variety and intensity of taste. By doing so I started to become more aware of and more familiar with the sensual pleasures of the physical world. Cultivating this awareness and familiarity leads to a sensual delight in being here which in turn can sometimes lead to a delicious slipping into a PCE of the actual world. As well as focussing my attention on sensate experiencing of the physical world, I would often deliberately contemplate on the nature of the physical world. This meant that in looking at the sky, I started to understand that we human animals ‘swim’ at the bottom of the earth’s atmosphere rather as fish swim in the sea. The air we breathe in and out and move around in ebbs and flows in the form of breezes and winds, its temperature varies seasonally, daily and often momentarily, it varies in moisture content between dry and decidedly wet and visually it offers a constantly changing scene varying from starless or star-filled nights, endless varieties of sunrises and sunsets, and a constantly changing scene of cloudless or cloud-filled days. Added to all this is the precipitation cycle that draws water from the land and oceans and deposits it around the planet in the form of rain, constantly nourishing the vegetate life and thereby sustaining the animate life on the planet. This very same combination of sensate experience and reflective contemplation can be applied to all of the physical world we live in, without discrimination. Thus the materials, objects, tools and machines that human beings fashion out of the earth equally become things of fascination – the very matter of the earth made even more wondrous by the application of ingenuity. Over time these experiences of sensual delight in being here can develop into a marvelling at being here doing this business of being alive and then things really get cooking because you then start to become obsessive about wanting to live this experience as an on-going actuality, 24/7. What can also be gleaned from such moments – provided one is observant and doesn’t latch onto the experience and claim it for one’s own self-aggrandizement – is that such moments of sensual experiencing and pure contemplation only occur when ‘I’ am absent. You can observe that such moments weren’t occurring when I was feeling bored or lacklustre a while ago, in fact it couldn’t have occurred then because the predominant experience I was having then was feeling bored or lacklustre. In such moments you can realize that only ‘I’ stand in the way of the perfection and purity of the actual world becoming apparent. Then it is clearly seen that ‘me’ is the problem, not ‘me’ choosing to ‘cling to the past or future!’ or attempting to ‘try and compose meaningful narratives out of the past and future’ . In such moments you can realize that the traditional approach of practicing detachment (as in not-clinging) and practicing denial (as in no past and no future) can only lead to disassociative states of being – the antithesis of the experience of being fully alive in this very moment of time, in this very place in physical space. What actualism offers is a way of progressively dismantling ‘me’, the spoiler who stands in the way of the pure consciousness experiencing of being fully alive in the actual world. Actualism is not about dissociating from, or associating with, the grim reality of normal human experiencing. What is on offer is a third alternative – eliminating ‘who’ you think and feel you are and discovering what you are – but for this to happen work needs to be done to get from A to B. As you have probably gathered, the main point of my input regarding your reflections is to encourage you to more and more make your contemplations as down-to-earth as possible. This way you not only avoid the trap of spirituality but you will find yourself more and more coming to your senses, both literally and figuratively.
I would just like to make a comment about the subject of ‘dumb’ questions before I reply to your post. You had said to No 38 –
Asking questions is a sign of interest and curiosity and listening to and carefully weighing up the answers is a sign of sincerity and intelligence. I remember watching a television documentary about the so-called intelligence of chimpanzees and much ado was made of the fact that some use twigs to pick ants out of a nest or use rocks to crack nuts open. And yet what struck me most was a segment which showed chimps sitting in the rain getting soaking wet – obviously their so-called intelligence didn’t extend to such a basic thing as finding shelter, let alone fashioning it out of branches and leaves. Nowadays I make the same observation whenever I see human beings hiding from the world in meditation, praying to some mythical God or lapping up the Wisdom of some Godman or other in unquestioning reverence. Human beings have become so stuck in the ancient rut of believing the spiritual fairy tales of good and evil spirits, of a Creator God and of a life after death that they have collectively agreed to completely shut out the possibility that it is possible to leave the old behind and move on. So any questions you have of daring to leave the old behind and move on are hardly dumb questions, for to even consider the possibility of ditching the old is daring, not dumb. You may well feel foolish in asking your questions, as I remember I did in the early days, but I came to recognize this as pride standing in the way. I then realized that it was silly to let a feeling stand in the way of my becoming free of the human condition. * I took some time away from the list for a while in order to sort some things out regarding my current attempt at actualism. The main focus I want to operate with now is experiential. It became apparent that some of my ‘clashes’ with some of you have had their roots in my attempted analytical/emotional understanding – rather than tested out in experience – thus, I often treated much of what was said as having implications for me that they just don’t need to have. Although most of the posts on this list are a one-to-one communication, the nature of what is being discussed should be of interest to all and applicable to all. This is because what is being discussed on this list is the human condition of malice and sorrow and how to become free of it. Only by understanding and acknowledging that the human condition is universal to all human beings can one stop being a supporter of the status quo, stop defending the indefensible, stop denying one’s own feelings of malice, stop indulging in one’s own feelings of sorrow and take up the challenge of becoming actually happy and harmless. My understanding of the ‘human condition’ has changed quite dramatically the last year or so – as a result of encountering actualism. Whereas I used to understand the ‘human condition’ as a rather abstract term which referred to the fact that there is so much suffering in the world, I can see that actualism gives it quite a unique and more interesting meaning. As I see it now, for the actualist, the ‘human condition’ refers mainly to something concrete – that is the instinctual passions one is born with – and all that results from that basic fact. I remember Vineeto once calling the human condition a ‘disease’ – which I didn’t like, since I saw many people who are generally relatively happy individuals, but now I agree it is a disease – since it refers to the instinctual passions one is born with – it couldn’t be anything but a disease. I see that now. I had to understand it first though, before I could agree. In my early days of actualism I remember asking Richard a ‘dumb’ question as to what was the source of the human condition. He replied that it was the genetically-encoded instinctual survival program – a program that is universal in its basic format in all sentient animals – and in the human species this program manifests itself as instinctual passions, mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. As I thought more about it, it became obvious that I had each of these passions extant, and flourishing, in me. Despite my good intentions, my moral forthrightness and my spiritual leanings it was obvious to me that I was, at heart, an instinctually driven being – utterly obsessed about my own survival and the survival of my genes. As I became aware of these passions in operation I came to more and more understand and experience that this programming acts not only to prevent my own happiness but also acts to prevent me from being harmless to my fellow human beings. Although I usually like to base my understandings on my own experience, it is also useful to observe others, and by doing so I could see that everyone, without exception, is instinctually driven, which is why the best they can hope for is a relative happiness and a conditional harmlessness. Another observation that can be made is that what human beings proudly call ‘civilized behaviour’ is but a thin veneer that readily dissipates when a person, tribe or nation feels they have their backs to the wall or when they take offence at the words or actions of others. Then the human condition does indeed become ‘something concrete’ – manifested as murder, rape, domestic violence, child abuse, suicide, torture, ethnic cleansings, genocide, acts of terrorism and territorial and religious wars. As you can see, it doesn’t take a great deal of thinking to see the link between your own personal feelings of anger and acts of terrorism and war and your own feelings of sadness and the universal feeling of despair that inflicts all of humankind. * I am always somewhat surprised that so few people seem to stop to spend the time to do a bit of stocktaking and re-evaluating as to what they have done and where they are headed. Many of my generation had both the opportunity and time to think about the ‘meaning of life’ and many indeed did begin searching for something better than grim reality and something less shonky and self-indulgent than Olde Time Religion. <snip> And I can only say this because I too went down that path for a good many years. And the only reason I stopped being a follower and a believer was that I took the time to do some stocktaking and re-evaluating of my life – and I didn’t like what I saw so I determined to change. Better to make such evaluations now – even if it involves contemplating lying on your deathbed – and make the necessary changes now rather than end up dying in sad regret of never having fully lived. Yes, it seems that ‘stocktaking’ is essential for change to take place. And in order for any stocktaking to take place, one needs firstly to be sufficiently discontent with one’s own stock in life. * It was strange to recognize that I often spend my time looking for some narrative that ties ‘my’ life together into some meaningful narrative, and I realized that this sort of enterprise is one of the hopeless things that ‘I’ do, since the ‘meaning’ of my life depends upon some interpretation of the events of my life. Who else but you is going to interpret the events of your life and who else but you is going to determine what meaning it should have? There is no one better qualified, or more vitally interested, than you to decide what to do with your life. I know, for me, it was glaringly obvious that if I wanted to become free of the human condition in toto, then the doing of it was up to ‘me’. There is no one better qualified for the job than ‘me.’ On the other hand, insofar as the narrative ‘I’ construct depends upon beliefs and hopes for the future – it is always in question – not certain – thus, not entirely reliable. Given that the ‘narrative ‘I’ construct’ is in fact the life you are leading now, the question remains – what do you want to do with the rest of your life. I know when I came across actualism I had little trouble in reliably assessing that I was far from being free of malice and sorrow and as such the challenge implicit in actualism to devote my life to becoming actually happy and harmless proved irresistible. * Whenever I had an experiential realization that this is the only moment I can experience being alive I deliberately made the effort to focus my attention on sensate experiencing, be it hearing the full range of sounds about, smelling the smells of various things, seeing with either soft-focused or investigative eyes, feeling with the whole of one’s skin or the touch of the finger and taking the time to savour the variety and intensity of taste. By doing so I started to become more aware of and more familiar with the sensual pleasures of the physical world. Cultivating this awareness and familiarity leads to a sensual delight in being here which in turn can sometimes lead to a delicious slipping into a PCE of the actual world. Yes, I know exactly what you mean – and this is why I’m finally getting that an ‘experiential’ approach is the only way to go – or as you call it further down, ‘down-to-earth.’ It does take a while to get it that what is on offer here is utterly down-to-earth. It is not at all ethereal or other-worldly as is spiritualism nor is it at all about accepting or better coping with the grim reality of normal human experiencing. * As well as focussing my attention on sensate experiencing of the physical world, I would often deliberately contemplate upon the nature of the physical world. This meant that in looking at the sky, I started to understand that we human animals ‘swim’ at the bottom of the earth’s atmosphere rather as fish swim in the sea. The air we breathe in and out and move around in ebbs and flows in the form of breezes and winds, its temperature varies seasonally, daily and often momentarily, it varies in moisture content between dry and decidedly wet and visually it offers a constantly changing scene varying from starless or star-filled nights, endless varieties of sunrises and sunsets, and a constantly changing scene of cloudless or cloud-filled days. Added to all this is the precipitation cycle that draws water from the land and oceans and deposits it around the planet in the form of rain, constantly nourishing the vegetate life and thereby sustaining the animate life on the planet. This very same combination of sensate experience and reflective contemplation can be applied to all of the physical world we live in, without discrimination. Thus the materials, objects, tools and machines that human beings fashion out of the earth equally become things of fascination – the very matter of the earth made even more wondrous by the application of ingenuity. Over time these experiences of sensual delight in being here can develop into a marvelling at being here doing this business of being alive and then things really get cooking because you then start to become obsessive about wanting to live this experience as an on-going actuality, 24/7. What can also be gleaned from such moments – provided one is observant and doesn’t latch onto the experience and claim it for one’s own self-aggrandizement – is that such moments of sensual experiencing and pure contemplation only occur when ‘I’ am absent. You can observe that such moments weren’t occurring when I was feeling bored or lacklustre a while ago, in fact it couldn’t have occurred then because the predominant experience I was having then was feeling bored or lacklustre. In such moments you can realize that only ‘I’ stand in the way of the perfection and purity of the actual world becoming apparent. Then it is clearly seen that ‘me’ is the problem, not ‘me’ choosing to ‘cling to the past or future!’ or attempting to ‘try and compose meaningful narratives out of the past and future’. In such moments you can realize that the traditional approach of practicing detachment (as in not-clinging) and practicing denial (as in no past and no future) can only lead to disassociative states of being – the antithesis of the experience of being fully alive in this very moment of time, in this very place in physical space. Right – it’s not ‘me’ choosing to ‘cling to the past or future’ that is the problem, but ‘me.’ Clinging to the past and future is a symptom, not the cause. I definitely don’t want to go the detachment route – and it’s not so much that there is no past or future – just that the past and future aren’t actual. Now is all that is actual. And not only is this moment in time the only moment you can experience as an actuality, but this place in physical space is the only place you can experience as an actuality. Those who deliberately practice not-clinging to time (this moment) and space (this physical place) end up wafting around with their head in the clouds, being some-place-else-but-here – the antithesis of fully being here in this moment of time, in this place in physical space. So, if I may suggest, when you contemplate on the fact that this moment in time the only moment you can experience as an actuality, don’t neglect the fact that this place in physical space is the only place you can experience as an actuality – then you will really start to come down to earth for the first time in your life. * What actualism offers is a way of progressively dismantling ‘me’, the spoiler who stands in the way of the pure consciousness experiencing of being fully alive in the actual world. Actualism is not about dissociating from, or associating with, the grim reality of normal human experiencing. What is on offer is a third alternative – eliminating ‘who’ you think and feel you are and discovering what you are – but for this to happen work needs to be done to get from A to B. As you have probably gathered, the main point of my input regarding your reflections is to encourage you to more and more make your contemplations as down-to-earth as possible. This way you not only avoid the trap of spirituality but you will find yourself more and more coming to your senses, both literally and figuratively. Thanks for your input, Peter. Down-to-earth is so much more fun than dissociation! A thought I’ve been mulling lately… It seems that spiritual freedom takes the path of despair – while actual freedom takes the path of delight. The very idea of spiritual freedom is totally dependent for its existence on the firmly entrenched belief that human existence on earth is essentially a suffering existence. In monotheistic religions this usually equates with being born in sin and the only means of salvation are feelings of repentance combined with a mind-numbing surrender to the authority of some mythical God. In Eastern religions a plethora of fairy tales of the essential misery of human existence abound and Buddhism, the fastest growing of the Eastern religions, is up front in its teachings about life on earth. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism proclaims –
As can be seen from the first Noble Truth, the belief that life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering is fundamental to the Buddhist religion. If you don’t believe this first premise then the whole of Buddhist teachings can be seen for what it is – a moral and ethical teaching that does nothing but promote smug feelings of pious self-righteousness. If you eliminate the belief that life is ‘fundamentally disappointment and suffering’ then you leave a very big hole in the belief in a God, by whatever name, and the belief in a life after death, by whatever tradition. And if you do the necessary work to eliminate not only the belief but the affective experience that life is ‘fundamentally disappointment and suffering’ then the whole frantic pursuit of a spiritual freedom can be seen for what it is – dissociation and self-aggrandizement run amok. And in this process of eliminating these beliefs and invidious feelings what increasingly becomes magically evident are feelings of delight and wonderment at being here, doing this business we call being alive. This is starting to be fun :o) Yep. Once you ditch the seriousness of the moral self-righteousness of spiritual belief there is a lot of fun and freedom to be had in investigating the human condition in toto.
Just a general response – as to avoid longwindedness. In my experience, it’s a tough thing to avoid. I remember trying to write shorter posts at some stage but eventually I gave up. I have found that the programming that makes up the human condition is so complex and so convoluted by the long history of belief and runs so deep that there are no shortcuts to understanding the programming and how it operates. To me it was often like trying to become free of a glue pot and it takes effort and time to do so, hence lengthy posts on occasions. I have been keeping your advice in mind over the last few days with some interesting results. First, an emphasis on sensuous attention to the senses – rather than trying to analyze what’s going on in my head. What I find is the more I am able to experience sensuously what is presented by the senses – that intellectual concerns begin to lose significance – since what is actually happening is much more interesting anyway. Just so you don’t misinterpret what I was saying, I’ll just post a bit from the Glossary –
The relevant wording is that it is important to discriminate between the ways you experience the world and that this discrimination is done by becoming attentive as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive. If this discriminating is done by repressing, ignoring or denying affective and cerebral experiencing whilst concentrating on sensate experiencing then it is nothing more than a ‘Stop and smell the roses’ philosophy – a philosophy that does nothing to facilitate a freedom from the human condition. I’m not dismissing your investigations and experiences, far from it. The whole point of the process of actualism is to more and more develop a delight at being here and delight is sensuous appreciation. But don’t forget when you’re not feeling good or not feeling excellent or not experiencing delight then you have something to look at and something to investigate – i.e. there is work to do. I noticed in your post to Richard that you are starting to realize that sincerity and integrity are vital to the actualism process. It is exactly these qualities that will prevent you from deluding or fooling yourself when you ask yourself ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ A little catch phrase that struck me in my early investigations and still sticks in my memory is that ‘fooling others is one thing but fooling myself is really, really silly’. It’s amazing what ‘wisdom’ the senses seem to have all on their own – their ability to discern and navigate without ‘me’ doing anything. Although wisdom is not a word I would use, I like your line of thinking. The observation of how I as this body can and does function remarkably well without that ‘little man in the head’ having to continuously pull at the levers can then lead to observing how many times that little man in the head (and his soul mate in the heart) manage to well and truly stuff things up. And not only for this flesh and blood body, but for others as well. Second, yesterday I had several experiences of being ‘near’ PCEs. I know that ‘I’ was still around, but the senses were greatly heightened, yet effortlessly so. I remember reading about someone in virtual freedom talking about the body feeling almost like constant orgasm. Anyway, when those moments happen – I definitely notice a tingling sensation throughout the body that might be described that way. Also, I used to wonder how anyone could find the experience of say, just lying in bed, interesting – but it’s starting to seem to me that it’s not so much ‘what’ is happening or being experienced that is fascinating, but ‘that’ it is happening here and now – that is where the real fascination comes in. Yep. Feeling excellent and experiencing the delight of being here on this paradisaical planet can be heady stuff – utterly thrilling at times. I can’t remember whether you were around at the time but we did have a discussion on the list some time ago about near PCEs, mini PCEs and so on. What came out of that discussion was the term ‘excellence experience’, so as to maintain a distinction between such experiences and a pure consciousness experience when both ‘I’ and ‘Me’ are temporarily in abeyance. A few links from this correspondence –
… and on the topic of discernment –
I don’t want to be a probity policeman insisting on the use of particular terms however I do see the sense in making a clear distinction between completely different experiences both for the sake of accurate communication and as an aid to fruitful ‘self’-investigation. This is also the very reason I put together the Glossary. As in all fields of scientific study, it is sensible to use commonly understood and agreed upon terminology when studying, personally investigating and discussing the full range of human experiencing – which is after all what this mailing list is about.
I’m not dismissing your investigations and experiences, far from it. The whole point of the process of actualism is to more and more develop a delight at being here and delight is sensuous appreciation. But don’t forget when you’re not feeling good or not feeling excellent or not experiencing delight then you have something to look at and something to investigate – i.e. there is work to do. Right – I do realize that the process of actualism is more than a ‘stop and smell the roses philosophy.’ Another way of putting my change in focus might be (as I’ve been thinking about it lately) living from ‘outside in’ – instead of living from ‘inside out.’ Now these are just words – but what I mean by it is that I find myself often trying to analyze my every thought, feeling and figure out where the motivation is coming from – which tends to be an analytic/ emotional process in itself which doesn’t work. I am certainly not trying to ignore the ‘inner’ processes, feeling, thoughts, etc. that are occurring – simply taking sensation as the starting point for attention. Feelings and thoughts are not ignored, but are second in priority. Now this is only a strategy – certainly not a recommendation for anyone else. It is something I’m attempting to see whether it brings long-term results. Whether I will eventually negate the strategy that anything at all has ‘priority’ in attention – I don’t know – but I also won’t know until I try it. I think ‘where’ this strategy got started is noticing the more ‘cerebral’ one is about all this – the less one is experiencing what is actually present now. I realize I have to be wary of giving anyone specific advice, particularly as my memory is fading about the details of my early years as an actualist. However, if I read you right, you seem to be becoming increasingly interested in being here and I can relate to that. For me, this change of interest, and focus, came about from two realizations. The first was that the whole crux of Eastern spiritual teachings was to retreat from being here – going ‘inside’ and finding an ‘inner peace’ in a non-physical feeling-only world. The second was the inescapable fact that this is the only moment I can actually – as in sensately – experience and to waste it by being ‘somewhere else’ is but to waste yet another moment. There is so much going on in experience that sometimes I wonder where to start – what to look at first – whether to try to ‘take it all in’ – in some indiscriminate way – or to focus on a particular feeling or sensation. I don’t know what your strategies were or are, but this is merely one that I’m exploring right now. (Now, reading back through this, and reflecting on it some more – I’m beginning to think that I already know the answer (from my own experience) as to what takes priority – that is, whatever is preventing me from experiencing this moment completely sensuously – so it must be two-fold – sensuously experience whatever is happening now as well as investigating whatever is preventing the actual. So it’s not likely that any simple ‘outside-in’ strategy would produce lasting results – rather it seems that the ‘priority’ is first of all ‘now’ and ‘feeling good’ by sensuous attention to thoughts, feeling, and sensations – then if one is not ‘feeling-good’ – figure out what is preventing that (now). There very well may be a somewhat subtle seduction in the idea of starting with the senses – since one is ‘pushing away’ or ‘repressing’ what is happening on the ‘inside.’ Thus, possibly avoiding ‘work that needs to be done.’ Was that your point, Peter? My experience is that what to look at is always obvious – what to look at is what is preventing you from being happy and harmless, right now. Unless your explorations have a down-to-earth intent they will never produce down-to-earth results. OK – so I’m disagreeing with myself now – I’m including what I already said about the ‘outside-in’ strategy with this post – though now after the current reflections – I plan to abandon that strategy for the current one which seems to more accurately reflect what I read in general on the actualist site. It’s nice to finally understand ‘why’ a particular process is in place and exactly what it does. There is a world of difference between doing something a particular way because someone else tells you it works – and doing it that way because you see for yourself how it works and exactly what it does.) Yep. I remember realizing that actualism was not about believing what Richard said was the truth, but finding out for myself whether it was a fact. And the only way to do this is to thoroughly road-test the method for yourself, by yourself. * Yep. Feeling excellent and experiencing the delight of being here on this paradisaical planet can be heady stuff – utterly thrilling at times. I can’t remember whether you were around at the time but we did have a discussion on the list some time ago about near PCEs, mini PCEs and so on. What came out of that discussion was the term ‘excellence experience’, so as to maintain a distinction between such experiences and a pure consciousness experience when both ‘I’ and ‘Me’ are temporarily in abeyance. <snip > I don’t want to be a probity policeman insisting on the use of particular terms – however I do see the sense in making a clear distinction between completely different experiences both for the sake of accurate communication and as an aid to fruitful ‘self’-investigation. This is also the very reason I put together the Glossary. As in all fields of scientific study, it is sensible to use commonly understood and agreed upon terminology when studying, personally investigating and discussing the full range of human experiencing – which is after all what this mailing list is about. I agree that common terminology is useful. I like the term ‘excellence experience’ very much as it seems we need a term for this – and it seems right in line with what a ‘virtual freedom’ would be like, since in those excellence experiences – I do experience being ‘virtually free.’ It seems that some of us – (I’m thinking now of myself, No 38, and No 21 – and I’m sure there would be others) that are groping for a term for this – which is why the terms ‘near-PCE’ or ‘mini-PCE’ are being used. I certainly don’t want to police terms either – but I do like ‘excellence experience’ since it gives the sense of being a sort of imitation or ‘near-PCE’ yet also different in kind. A metaphor I’ve been using lately runs like this. The normal human experience is where the ‘self’ is (or seems to be) in the driver’s seat. An ‘excellence experience,’ ‘near-PCE,’ ‘mini-PCE,’ or virtual freedom even is where the ‘driver-self’ is in the back seat. And an actual freedom or PCE is where the driver has (temporarily in the PCE) exited the car all together. It’s good fun not only to be making sense of all this but also to be able to communicate with each other in such a straight-forward manner. It is such a refreshing change to have mutual consensus based upon verifiable facts and tangible experience rather than the individual grandstanding and communal disharmony that the disparate beliefs of the spiritual world inevitably produce.
I’ve been doing some thinking about your post and what you said about your change in focus lately. I’ll just repost the relevant piece to remind you of what you said – I do realize that the process of actualism is more than a ‘stop and smell the roses philosophy.’ Another way of putting my change in focus might be (as I’ve been thinking about it lately) living from ‘outside in’ – instead of living from ‘inside out’. Now these are just words – but what I mean by it is that I find myself often trying to analyze my every thought, feeling and figure out where the motivation is coming from – which tends to be an analytic/ emotional process in itself which doesn’t work. I am certainly not trying to ignore the ‘inner’ processes, feeling, thoughts, etc. that are occurring – simply taking sensation as the starting point for attention. Feelings and thoughts are not ignored, but are second in priority. Now this is only a strategy – certainly not a recommendation for anyone else. It is something I’m attempting to see whether it brings long term results. Whether I will eventually negate the strategy that anything at all has ‘priority’ in attention – I don’t know – but I also won’t know until I try it. I think ‘where’ this strategy got started is noticing the more ‘cerebral’ one is about all this – the less one is experiencing what is actually present now. The more I thought about what you said, the more I could relate to it. It’s like what I have heard Richard describe as if ‘bringing yourself to the very outer layer of your eyeballs’ and I liked the description so much I have also used it myself. I can also remember describing this shift of focus or of attentiveness as ‘like stopping hiding behind the curtains and bringing yourself to the very front of the stage’. And no doubt other people will have other ways of describing this process of becoming less ‘self’-obsessed and more interested in, and aware of, what is happening ‘outside’, as you describe it. I have just found this piece from my journal that is relevant –
I found it interesting that I had to dig around in my memory to fully relate to what you were saying and on reflection I can see that this is not something I have to consciously make the effort to do now – I have become so accustomed to it that it has become second-nature now. But I do remember that it took constant stubborn effort at the time and I would find myself constantly falling back into not being here for long periods of time. This is not some easy thing we are talking of doing here – it is radically switching one’s focus 180 degrees from normal – ‘inside’, exclusive and ‘self’-centred – to not-normal –‘outside’, inclusive and unconditional. I went through a brief period of berating myself for falling back ‘inside’ until I realized that this was completely natural – the result of how ‘I’ have been programmed to think, feel and operate. I also came to realize that these periods of going back to normal – feeling bored, lacklustre, ‘out of it’, annoyed, melancholic, sad, fearful, and so on, were rich fields, tangible examples of my psyche in operation, ready and ripe for immediate investigation and exploration. Whenever I became aware that I had ‘not been here’ for a while, I immediately wanted to know why, what caused me to revert to normal? Then I would deliberately make an investigation of how my psyche had operated in that time – and the investigation was quite fresh because I could remember the event that triggered the feeling or emotion, I could often still feel the effects of the emotion, I could remember it taking over as it were. I have describe these investigations as periods of ‘self’-obsession – a deliberate and scientific obsession identical to that which a scientist, investigator or explorer has when he or she really wants to get to the bottom of something, once and for all. Sometimes these investigations would go very intensely for days, other times they would stew on the ‘back burner’ for months, sometimes the answer came easily, other times deep-sea diving was necessary, plunging into very dark, forbidding and forbidden places in my psyche. Then when the source was uncovered, the matter resolved, the answer found and the programming eliminated, it was back to feeling good, feeling really good or even feeling excellent. Whilst these explorations seem daunting at first, soon they take on a thrilling fascination and then even the explorations, no matter how daunting, become the very stuff of life itself. Then you find you’re really cooking – as if your life really has meaning for the first time. I think that about covers the ground of what I wanted to say. No doubt I have said all this before anyway, but I always enjoy talking afresh about this stuff, because we are pioneering this business of actualism and any tips or hints we can pass on to each other makes the job easier. I call it ‘trampling the long grass on the path’ – you have to trample your own grass for yourself but in doing so it inevitably makes the path easier for others to follow.
I do realize that the process of actualism is more than a ‘stop and smell the roses philosophy.’ Another way of putting my change in focus might be (as I’ve been thinking about it lately) living from ‘outside in’ – instead of living from ‘inside out’. Now these are just words – but what I mean by it is that I find myself often trying to analyze my every thought, feeling and figure out where the motivation is coming from – which tends to be an analytic/ emotional process in itself which doesn’t work. I am certainly not trying to ignore the ‘inner’ processes, feeling, thoughts, etc. that are occurring – simply taking sensation as the starting point for attention. Feelings and thoughts are not ignored, but are second in priority. Now this is only a strategy – certainly not a recommendation for anyone else. It is something I’m attempting to see whether it brings long term results. Whether I will eventually negate the strategy that anything at all has ‘priority’ in attention – I don’t know – but I also won’ t know until I try it. I think ‘where’ this strategy got started is noticing the more ‘cerebral’ one is about all this – the less one is experiencing what is actually present now. The more I thought about what you said, the more I could relate to it. It’s like what I have heard Richard describe as if ‘bringing yourself to the very outer layer of your eyeballs’ and I liked the description so much I have also used it myself. I can also remember describing this shift of focus or of attentiveness as ‘like stopping hiding behind the curtains and bringing yourself to the very front of the stage’. And no doubt other people will have other ways of describing this process of becoming less ‘self’-obsessed and more interested in, and aware of, what is happening ‘outside’, as you describe it. I have just found this piece from my journal that is relevant –
<Snipped> Whenever I became aware that I had ‘not been here’ for a while, I immediately wanted to know why, what caused me to revert to normal? Then I would deliberately make an investigation of how my psyche had operated in that time – and the investigation was quite fresh because I could remember the event that triggered the feeling or emotion, I could often still feel the effects of the emotion, I could remember it taking over as it were. I have describe these investigations as periods of ‘self’-obsession – a deliberate and scientific obsession identical to that which a scientist, investigator or explorer has when he or she really wants to get to the bottom of something, once and for all. Sometimes these investigations would go very intensely for days, other times they would stew on the ‘back burner’ for months, sometimes the answer came easily, other times deep-sea diving was necessary, plunging into very dark, forbidding and forbidden places in my psyche. Then when the source was uncovered, the matter resolved, the answer found and the programming eliminated, it was back to feeling good, feeling really good or even feeling excellent. Whilst these explorations seem daunting at first, soon they take on a thrilling fascination and then even the explorations, no matter how daunting, become the very stuff of life itself. Then you find you’re really cooking – as if your life really has meaning for the first time. All of what you say above I can identify with. If there are ‘stages’ of actualism, then this is the ‘stage’ I’m at. One where I must remind myself to ‘ask the question’ or to actually ‘be here now’ – but not as a watcher – rather as the flesh and blood body. Pushing awareness to the surface of the eyes describes it about right. And of course, one is not actually being here, as a flesh and blood body only, unless one is having a pure conscious experience at the time – a temporary period when there is no ‘I’ inside, or separate from, the corporeal flesh and body that I actually am. Unless I am having a PCE, in which case I am having a temporary experience of actually being here in the actual world, I am always ‘doing my best’ to be here by being continually attentive to how I am experience this moment of being alive. Occasionally, I will have some very successful days where things are getting clearer, then I will revert back to ‘normal’ for hours, days, or weeks while I ponder – but lately, I’ve been more determined – basically tired of slipping back to the normal and fearing what consequences following this thing through might bring. It is becoming an irresistible urge – even though ‘I’ might not be able to recognize the end result- or really know where this process leads. I can relate to this very well. In hindsight, it wasn’t as if I decided to become an actualist – there being no defining moment or definitive decision – but rather I was irresistibly drawn to proceed. All ‘I’ could do was deny, avoid, procrastinate or delay. I have just looked in my Journal and found that I have used the phrase ‘continually attracted’ to describe why I wanted to know about how to become actually free of malice and sorrow. There is a point, spot, place – whatever you want to call it where ‘effortless’ is the modus operandi – it seems that mental effort automatically implies a division we experience as ‘self’ – it seems the trick is finding that place where everything happens effortlessly. Effortlessness must be a sign of ‘apperception?’ Taking into consideration that you said previously – ‘occasionally, I will have some very successful days where things are getting clearer’, I suggest that it might be useful to reflect as to whether this increased clarity came about from effortlessness or from thinking – utilizing the brains capacity for attentiveness, sensual perception, sensible evaluation and contemplative reflection. I only say this because it is fashionable in many circles to denigrate the astounding ability of the human animal to be able to think and reflect and to venerate all sorts of affective experiences and imagination. Perhaps I can put it this way – when I ask myself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ I am asking a question and to come up with an answer requires thinking, aka mental effort. When you say ‘it seems the trick is finding that place where everything happens effortlessly’, I assume from the thread of this conversation that you are talking about getting to the stage where the actualism process is happening effortlessly – an effortless constant sensual attentiveness as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive. If this assumption is right then I would point out that you have previously said –
If I take your words at face value, they confirm my own experience that it takes determination, i.e.
to eventually get to the stage where a sensual attentiveness becomes effortless. In short, getting from the stage of being interested in actualism to the stage where the process is operating automatically and effortlessly requires effort – there is no other trick to it. If I can refer to a recent comment And isn’t it great to find out these things for yourself – to discover that your own freedom is exclusively in your own hands. Given that have said you welcome feedback, I’ll just round off with a comment on – ‘it seems that mental effort automatically implies a division we experience as ‘self’’. If I read you right, this supposition seems to be a hangover from Eastern religious belief wherein the ‘self’ is believed to be a thinking-self or ego-self only and a spurious feeling of freedom is gained by abandoning common sense thinking in an attempt to become a feeling-self only. As you know by now this is old archaic thinking – superstition based on ignorance of fact and empirical observation. To suppose that one can become free of being a psychological and psychic ‘self’ without ‘mental effort’ does not make sense. After all, ‘who’ you think you are is the result of thousands of years of cultural and social programming and ‘who’ you feel you are is the end result of billions of years of the genetically-sequenced struggle for survival of life on this planet. To become free of all of this programming in order for intelligence to be freed from these brutish instinctual passions is no easy task – to abandon thinking in favour of feeling is to forsake this task in favour of ‘self’-preservation. Having said that I can relate to what you are saying as I remember my early days of actualism when I thought that when I was feeling good or feeling excellent then I was ‘being here’ but when I was feeling angry, annoyed, frustrated, worried, sad or so on then I was ‘not being here’. As I began my investigations and ponderings about the nature of the human condition, I also thought I was not ‘being here’ if I was busy nutting out some issue or other, i.e. if I was busy thinking rather than sensately experiencing this moment of being alive. This idea of mine eventually lost credence as I started to become fascinated with, and subsequently began to enjoy, the process of thinking about the human condition and investigating how my psyche was programmed to function. The realization that really blew it out of the water, however, was the experiential realization in a PCE that it is always now and I am always here – I can never be anywhere else but here and I can never actually experience anytime other than now. It follows that if I am busy thinking now then that is what I am doing now, exactly as I am thinking now while typing these words and exactly as you are thinking now reading these words. This leads to the fact that I am often thinking – not always obviously – but to think that I am not here because I am thinking makes no sense at all. What I am saying can be confirmed by observation of what is happening whilst in a pure consciousness experience. In this temporary experience of ‘self’-defection the ability to think and reflect is neither absent nor is it inflamed by passion and imagination. In a PCE the ability to think and reflect is unfettered by beliefs, morals and ethics and is freed from both the savage and tender survival passions. A PCE confirms that who ‘I’ think and feel I am is a chimera, an illusion, someone and something that has no substance, someone and something that is not material, not flesh and blood. Who ‘I’ think and feel I am is not actual like the ‘stuff’ of the universe – be it the vacuum of the spaces between the swirls and lumps of matter in the infinitude of the universe or the play of the clouds across this earthly sky, the air that touches your skin, the warmth of the sun, the scent of a flower, the plastic of a computer keyboard or these fingers typing these words. In a PCE, I experience the actuality of all of this matter. In a PCE, I experience an actual world, existing in fact, sensately experienced as being so alive, so vibrant and so immediate that my identity as a ‘being’ temporarily disappears. With ‘me’ no longer here to rule the roost, as it where, a palpable freedom exists for I experience what I actually am for a period of time – a mortal flesh and blood human being, bristling with sense organs, able to think, reflect, contemplate and communicate as well as being able to be aware that I am aware. In fact, what I am is the very ‘stuff’ of this universe temporarily formed as this flesh and blood body and capable of being aware of this awareness. Or to put it as Richard puts it – ‘what I am is this universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood human being’. In a PCE – provided you resists the atavistic temptation to start swooning in rapture at the beauty of it all or indulging in ‘self’-aggrandizing fantasies – you can readily discern that the only reason you are experiencing the sensual delight and utter peacefulness of the actual world is because ‘you’ have temporarily left the stage. From this experiential realization a pure intent can arise to devote one’s life to the task of becoming happy and harmless – to actively dismantle my ‘self’, to dare to question the veracity of ‘my’ precious beliefs, to want to really come to understand both the nature and the source of the peripheral feelings of ‘self’ and sense of ‘being’ and to not stop until the process is finished and the very source of ‘me’, ‘me’ as a feeling ‘being’, is permanently eliminated, expunged. Then, when the PCE wanes and you return to being ‘normal’ again, back in normal everyday reality, ‘you’ find yourself with something to do. ‘You’ then have a reason for being, a life goal, a task, a job, and a fascinating one at that. And I can vouch that there is no more fascinating and rewarding thing you can do with your life than to devote your life to the task of becoming happy and harmless for this is the path to actual freedom. * No 62: It’s inquiry
until dissolution. Humpty Dumpty was ‘pushed’ in other words. It was not on his agenda.
Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
