Selected Correspondence Peter

I’ve been reflecting on our conversation about my use of the phrase ‘death-like’ to describe the experience of normal living compared to the vibrancy of a pure consciousness experience. I questioned whether I was being stubborn about my use of the phrase and whether another term would be more appropriate in the ‘How to become free of the human condition’ section of Actualism. You seem to favour ‘not fully alive’ for normal living, whereas Richard uses the term ‘second-best’, and ‘second-rate’ is another that comes to mind. I tend to stay clear of terms that allude to the spiritual-affective altered states of consciousness when referring to a down-to-earth sensual experience of the actual world and to me ‘fully’ could have that connation, given that its opposite is empty.

Given that actualism points to a freedom that is the polar opposite of the traditional spiritual freedom, it is inevitable that the majority of readers will read into the actualism writings either a personal or a general condemnation that is simply not there. The topics that are being talked about openly on this mailing list are by their very nature confrontational and as such will bring forth attitudes and feelings that are ‘polarising’. But to attempt to censure, water down or stifle these discussions in order to make the dialogues ‘pay off’ is to miss the whole point of actualism.

Just as an aside, one of the aspects of the spiritual misuse and abuse of words that particularly struck me lately is the spiritual use of selfless or no-self to describe the delusionary state of God-realization. The person suffering from this altered state of consciousness often claims to have no identity when the fact is that they believe, feel and proclaim that they have become a timeless and spaceless psychic identity – aka God by whatever name – temporarily residing in a flesh and blood mortal body. Thus, he spiritualists should be up-front and describe their exalted and acclaimed state as a body-less or a no-body experience – the very antithesis of a self-less experience.

Spiritualism is all about inflating both the social identity and instinctual identity such that one feels like god – and its hard to imagine a bigger identity than feeling oneself to be God – whereas actualism is about incrementally eliminating both the social and instinctual identity. 180 degrees opposite.

If all else fails, which it clearly is – take unilateral action.

I might suggest that if it were so easy then there would be peace on earth by now. The problem up until now is the instinctual notion of ‘we’ – the passionate bond that ties human beings together ensures that ‘we’ either sink together or tread water together. As such, ‘we’ will always get it wrong and the only way out of the mess is for individual members of the species to take unilateral action – to lead by practical example, to prove that it is possible to become actually free of malice and sorrow.

The process of spiritual awareness is totally locked into and fixated with spiritualism. A thorough examination of the process of spiritual awareness will reveal it is a process unabashedly aimed at self-aggrandizing. Why else do those who succeed on the spiritual search end up feeling God-realized or God-like or a God or Goddess? So-called spiritual awareness is in fact a compulsive restriction of awareness in that sensate experience is avoided and sensible thinking is denied. Nowhere is this more obvious than those who sit in the lotus position meditating – retreating from the world of the senses, indulging in imaginary ‘inner’ fantasies and yet claiming they are being here.

The actualism method is not a refinement of the spiritual process of self-aggrandizement – the actualism process of ‘self’-awareness is the aimed diametrically opposite – at self-immolation. Or, to put it another way – the spiritual method aims to blow the balloon up, actualism aims to pop it.

The whole point of actualism is to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. It’s not about changing your wife or husband, your children, your boss, your neighbour or your living circumstances. It’s not about changing the morals or ethics or the social, political, educational or legal systems of the world. It’s not about stopping other people fighting or feuding, nor is it about saving or salving other people. Actualism is not about changing others – it’s about taking unilateral action and changing yourself, radically and irrevocably.

Last year I found myself designing a house that was completely foreign to what I would normally consider my style and yet I did the job I was paid to do without a glimmer of resentment or frustration. I did the best I could to give the client what she wanted in the way of style and used my experience and knowledge to ensure that she got best practical value for her money. It was a liberating exercise for me, for not only had I broken free of the values imposed by my vocational training but also of the belief that there is an intrinsic and absolute beauty. As there was no conflict at all between the client and myself, everyone won out of the situation.

There is ample evidence that everyone has experienced brief one-off experiences of perfection and purity, where there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ present to muck things up. These experiences are commonly called peak experiences although Richard has used the more descriptive term pure consciousness experience (PCE) so as to distinguish these brief moments of ‘self’-lessness from the spiritually-polluted, totally-affective, entirely-imaginary altered states of consciousness (ASC) where an aggrandized ‘self’ claims the experience for his or her own glory.

However, my story was not told as a moral or ethical tale or an instance of wisdom such as the psittacism that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. The story I told was a practical example of the actualism method in action and as such the example falls into the reward-for-effort category. I did not miraculously have a temporary experience of being in the flow – what I was talking about was a pragmatic result of some four years of constantly working on eliminating malice and sorrow from my life. I did not set out to become free of beauty, I set out to become happy and harmless and one of the reoccurring times when I was not harmless was in occasional uncomfortable, difficult or even antagonistic interactions with my clients.

What I eventually tracked these feelings down to was that I had been programmed to regard beauty as an absolute value – something that ‘I’ thought and felt was worth fighting for or worth defending. When I saw that this old program stood in the way of harmonious interactions with my fellow human beings, it was clearly time to eradicate it from my life.

The result of this process was not a moral or ethical decision made based on what I should or shouldn’t do, or what was the right thing to do or what was wrong the wrong thing to do, because this would only mean that I was suppressing the feeling – in other words, kidding myself. The end result of this process was the experiential understanding that maintaining this old piece of programming would mean I was not harmless, and because being harmless is my numero uno goal in life, there was no way I could sustain the ideal or the passion-backed feeling of beauty.

The other discovery that happened when the feeling of beauty collapsed was that the feeling of ugliness collapsed along with it and as a consequence even more of the magic of actuality became apparent in my daily life.

*

I’ve noticed I’ve gotten into what could be described as a story telling mode, but my experience is that I have gleaned as much information from listening to Richard’s down-to-earth stories as I have from listening to or reading his Journal and his correspondence. In hindsight, the process of actualism for me firstly involved backtracking out of that great fantasy diversion that all seekers of freedom and peace have traditionally made – the spiritual path. Having got out of that mess, I then found myself back where I left off before I went up that track – making sense of and becoming free of the real-world. I had done a bit of it in my time before I became a spiritualist but I was emboldened and encouraged by Richard’s discovery to go all the way.

I guess that’s why I am writing more about day-to-day down-to-earth ‘real’-word issues with you, because once I got my head out of the spiritual clouds, these are what became my fascination.

I don’t know what you mean by a ‘non-linear mechanism of information’. When I re-read my story, I thought it was reasonably straightforward but maybe the further explanation I gave will be of help in understanding it. I’m not trotting out a spiritual-type wisdom, spinning a mythical yarn or recounting moral tale – I told the story in order to relate my down-to-earth experiences of applying the actualism method to a fellow human being.

Spiritual teachings, both Eastern and Western, are awash with fairy-tale stories of mythical God-like figures and these fairy stories have been passed down and embellished over millennia. The whole point of spiritual stories is that they convey an affective feeling and not that they make intellectual sense, are factual or even relate to actual flesh and blood human beings.

I too am no fan of intellectual discourses but discussing and thinking about an issue in order to make sense of it is another matter entirely. It can take a good deal of effort to break the habits of spiritual indoctrination of thoughtless faithful acceptance – the ingrained ‘socio-cultural-language’ program as you called it – and to start to re-engage one’s brain and learn to think again.

If you take away the socio-cultural-language programming that disparages intellectual discourse you may well find a wealth of information in discussions on this list as well as on the AF website that will both facilitate a bare awareness and encourage clear thinking. Only by becoming aware of, and then making sense of, one’s own social and instinctual programming can one ever become free of the human condition.

I can remember the early months of my interest in actualism as not being easy at all. Because of my spiritual indoctrination and training I naturally thought of actualism in spiritual terms but there gradually came a slow dawning that something was different. I then started to make a deliberate attempt to put my spiritual preconceptions aside and to carefully read what was written and take it at face value. I began to look for, and take notice of, the differences between actualism and spiritualism rather than skim over the disparities in a vain attempt to fit them both into the same basket. This careful and painstaking discernment eventually bore fruit and it gave me the key to being able to more and more come to understand the distinction between actual freedom and spiritual freedom.

I came to understand that Actual Freedom is all that the spiritualists have been seeking for millennia ... but much, much more. Whilst Spiritual Freedom is imaginary, affective and absolutely other-worldly, Actual Freedom is actual, sensual and utterly down-to-earth. A world of difference, in fact.

There is nothing mysterious or esoteric about the clarity expressed on the AF web-site. They are simply the result of some down-to-earth intelligent writing about the human condition by some fellow human beings who have freed themselves of the beliefs and passions that create and sustain the human condition of malice and sorrow.

What is extraordinary and magical is that the very process of freeing oneself from these beliefs and passions reveals that the long sought-after freedom, peace and tranquillity is already here and freely available when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul are not strutting the stage as it were. But then again, everyone knows this for a fact as everyone has had glimpses of the perfection and purity of the actual world in their own ‘self’-less pure consciousness experiences at some stage in their life.

What you are saying makes complete sense to me for I was faced with the same conundrum some 5 years ago. I was fortunate to have been too sensitive to battle it out with others in the real world and too sincere to rise to the top of the spiritual heap and become yet another charlatan God-man in the spiritual world. Thus knowing by my own experience that both the real world and the spiritual world sucked, I felt I had nothing left to lose by trying something new, a fresh and totally different direction.

So I just turned around 180 degrees and started to question not only the spiritual teachers ... but the facticity of the sacred and holy teachings themselves. When I started to understand the inherent common sense in actualism I began to ask such questions as ‘What if there is nothing but this physical universe?’ ‘What if there is no outside to the universe, no other-worlds, ethereal or otherwise?’ ‘What if God does not exist at all?’ ‘What if there is no life after death, no reincarnation, no heaven, no hell?’ ‘What if death is the end, finish, kaput?’ ‘What if the cause of all the human animosity and misery is due to the fear, aggression, nurture and desire inherent in our instinctual passions, both the condemned and repressed savage passions and the lauded and revered tender passions?’ ‘What if everyone has got it wrong and the answer lies 180 degrees opposite to spiritual belief?’

I won’t go on, for you will have got my gist by now. I simply started to turn my ‘what ifs’ to questioning all of Humanity’s beliefs, fairy stories, sacred teachings, wisdoms and the like that have as their basic premise that one has only two options in life – battling it out in the grim reality of materialism or believing in the fairy-tale Greater Reality of a spiritual world.

When I got the hang of the fact that this very moment is the only moment I can experience being here, I then began to actively cultivate the habit of discovering why I was wasting this very moment by being unhappy, sad, annoyed at something someone else did, upset by what someone else said, angry at someone else, feeling sorry for myself, feeling lonely, etc. I became very observant of what it was that was preventing me from being happy, right now, right here, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they are.

So what I am suggesting is to question on two fronts – to investigate the human condition in general and investigate how it prevents you from being happy and harmless. This type of diligent intelligent observation and dispassionate awareness is not an easy business to cultivate as it involves actively questioning all of one’s social-spiritual programming and one’s animal-instinctual survival passions – the very stuff that ‘I’ am made of.

But once you get the hang of it, this persistent process of ‘self’-investigation and subsequent incremental ‘self’-elimination begins to make the business of being alive on this planet a thrilling and magical adventure for the first time in one’s life.

I’m wrong. I know I am wrong, you don’t need to keep telling me. I turned around 180 degrees from where everybody else is headed and went down the wrong path. I simply stopped ding the ‘right’ thing, being ‘right’ and insisting I was ‘right’. I put on my dunce’s hat, went back to school and unlearnt all that I had been told was right.

You are also very busy with the issue of me being a liar. Of course I am a liar from your perspective because what I am saying is not your truth, let alone the Truth. However by insisting I am wrong and a liar, you ignore the very point of actualism – it has nothing at all to do with the traditional, the ancient, the normal or the spiritual wisdom of what it is to be human. Actualism is radically different, it is diametrically opposite – it is a path never travelled before. It literally involves going where no man or woman has gone before – from a real-world perspective it is madness and from a spiritual world perspective it is a complete and utter rejection of everything spiritual.

Consequently I gave up the traditional well-worn spiritual path years ago. I no longer believe in animating spirits, Gods and Goddesses, ancient healings and esoteric medicines, divinations and prophecies, energies and auras, folk tales and legends, gurus and shamans, fairies and goblins, sacred sites and cosmic planes, chakras and pranas, telepathy and spiritualism, visions and entities, ESP and UFO’s, Chi Gong and Feng Shui, somas and souls, mysticism and meditation, rituals and rites, reincarnations and past lives, karmas and dharmas, other-worlds and other-dimensions, devils and demons and the like.

Then, when I was halfway ‘normal again’, halfway and no more, I then finished the job I half-started before I got sucked into the spirit-ual world – I got myself free from the clutches of the real world. Having done that, I found I had literally taken the wind out of my instinctual passions. I can’t remember the last time I got annoyed by something or someone, let alone angry. Sadness has passed so long ago I still am a bit taken aback at how people manage to complain about life and bitch about other people. But I’m getting used to the fact that being malicious and feeling sorrowful is what passes for ‘being normal’, whether it be in the real world or the spiritual world.

I’m definitely wrong from your point of view and I am decidedly on the wrong track ... and all I can say it is wonderful to be here.

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

That quite simple realization, i.e. an acknowledgement of fact that shattered the belief I previously held to be a truth, was sufficient to begin the process of extracting myself from the spiritual world and its blatantly ‘self’-centred beliefs and truths.

Realizations still seem important to me.

The process of actualism is chock-a-block full of realizations. However, it is important to make a distinction between the realizations that happen in the process of actualism and the traditional Spiritual Realizations, which are better termed Revelations.

For an actualist a realization is an acknowledgement of a fact that shatters a belief that was previously held to be a truth.

For a Spiritualist a realization is the emotional embracing of a belief that then serves to obfuscate a fact that he/she did not want to acknowledge.

One of the clearest distinctions between the two is that for an actualist, at some stage, there is a realization that there is no life after death, that the belief is nought but a gigantic multifaceted fairy-story, whereas for a Spiritualist, at some stage, the realization is a heart-felt embrace of the belief in a spirit-world life after death for ‘me’ as a spirit-being, i.e. only ‘my’ body dies and ‘I’ am immortal.

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

It is however important to understand that the newly created process of actualism is 180 degrees opposite to traditional spiritualism and that actualism requires a turning around and heading in the opposite direction from seeking a spiritual, ethereal freedom. Yet this does not mean that you head back into the real world and the debilitating cynicism of the Land of Lament – this turning around means you head straight for the actual world. And this is where the PCE becomes one’s goal or target – the desire to live the pure consciousness experience 24 hrs. a day everyday becomes the total focus for an actualist. If you look at the diagram we made, it becomes clear that someone who has been heading towards Enlightenment has to turn around and travel directly towards Actual Freedom and does not have to go back into everyday reality or real-world misery. I think this may be a useful thing to keep in mind during the process, lest you ever feel like you are becoming real-world normal again.

Dute*

*Said in response to something that is so obvious to everyone ... or should be.

What I write of is not obvious to everyone as it is the first time, apart from Richard’s and Vineeto’s writings, that this has been said. It is therefore understandable that it is a struggle and an effort to accept something that is so strange and unknown. The only point of reference I had was the peak experience where I remembered that I had experienced the actual world free of a self – or of a god/creator to whom I felt gratitude, or of the seductive feeling of Love, Glory, or Oneness.

The purity, perfection, directness, sensual experience was so startling, so immediate, that it was astounding – yet all was calm, easy, carefree and delightful. I was the universe-experiencing-itself as a sensate, flesh and blood human being. ( note – most definitely not ... U niverse)

So, hope this explains things a bit more –

It took me months and months of reading and contemplating to begin to realize what Richard was saying, and how radically different it was to the spirit-ual concepts I had, but a fascination of investigating and discovering some thing new ... drove me on ... beyond my pride ...

Those who have not had the mystical experience would still think it can be described and discussed, for they are still in their heads, still proud of their cleverness. Of course it is not a transmission from ‘the Holy Men’, it is a realization of what is. It can best be described with hearty laughter. Do you understand hearty laughter?’

This seems to me not only woolly but a mere parroting of the words of others.

Of course, these are well-used words...as are most words. Your judgement is also a well-used judgement.

Okay, try these words then –

‘There is, categorically, no such thing as actual life after death. The dearly wished-for hope of a life after death is a mere fantasy ‘fervently wished to be true’ by the ‘self’, the illusionary psychological and psychic alien entity residing within the physical body of all human beings, in a futile attempt to deny the actuality of physical death’

‘The cultivation of a spiritual ‘watcher’ and the subsequent Self-realisation or Enlightenment is a mere delusion (an illusion fabricated out of an illusion) whereby the psychic entity ‘feels’ it is Immortal and Eternal.’

‘Actual Freedom lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spiritual freedom. It is actual, sensate, tangible, ever-present, delightful, pure and perfect and available to any who is daring enough to free themselves of both the psychological and psychic entities within. Spiritual freedom, on the other hand is imaginary, cerebral, fleeting, emotive (loving), compassionate (sorrowful), and woe-fully corrupted by power and authority.’
... ... ... Peter.

Not ‘well-used words’, but fresh off the keyboard, and please do tell me who else has this sort of ‘well-used’ judgement? Where else have you read this?

Who else is saying this – or has ever said this?

I genuinely would be interested if you have heard this elsewhere as Richard, Vineeto and I have searched high and low through a lot of the voluminous ‘New-Age’ and all of the all-encompassing Ancient Wisdom. We have found no one who has challenged the Eastern spiritual and religious texts, let alone proposed that ... EVERYONE HAS GOT IT 180 DEGREES WRONG, EVERYONE.

But it does make sense – and it does explain why, after millions, if not billions, of devotees having diligently practiced the methods, surrendered, trusted, had faith and lived the teachings, that there is still not even a semblance of peace or harmony anywhere on this paradisiacal planet. Surely we can say the well-used words and well-used judgements of the Ancient Wise Men have failed, (or at least be subject to some intelligent scrutiny?)

Or are we to give them a few more millennia to prove their case. Or are their words and judgements so, so Holy and Sacrosanct.

It is good to talk about the world as-it-is, for it is where we humans live our lives, the world we were born into.

The substantive and diametrically opposite difference between spirituality and actualism is that –

• the spiritually inclined regard the both the physical, actual world of people, things and events and the ‘real’ world of human construct as illusionary and focus their awareness and efforts on the ‘inner’ world of the Divine or Love (or Love Agapé)
• the mere handful of actualists concur that the real world is illusionary but have experienced the spiritual world as a delusion (an illusion fabricated out of an illusion) and delight in living, free of malice and sorrow, in the actual, perfect and pure, physical universe.

‘Subtle, sparkling, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across a landscape in spring-time in one continuous stream of vibrations... That is the radiance of thine own true nature.’ Bardo Thodol

Ah, the affectations and feelings in full flight, seductive as ever. Ever promising and ever failing to deliver except in fleeting glimpses, unless by supreme effort (usually suffering) one becomes fully deluded into feeling glory and awe. ‘Thine own true nature’ is of course to realise that one is ‘timeless, never-ending, always has been, always will be’

It is an enormous construct that has been built up over millennia and as such is not at all easy to begin to question let alone see through in it’s entirety. The only guide is the peak experience, or Pure Consciousness Experience (PCE), when one is able to directly experience the perfection and purity of the physical universe free of any ‘self’ whatsoever, free of a personal ‘self’ and free of the ‘Grand Self’. We tend not to recall these experiences or re-interpret them later as spiritual experiences, such is the instinctual cunning of the ‘self’ to remain in existence.

A Self is, after all still, a self, merely in a grander form, and a deluded one at that, as ‘it’ then believes it is immortal and will survive after physical death of the ‘body/mind’.

Everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong – such is the overwhelming power both of wishful thinking and passionate feelings.

I’m talking to you about what I experience when there are no thoughts! There is no female or male in witnessing just being! I have taken the time to read some of your long winded postings, and as far as I can see you are talking about spaces of the mind that you are experiencing whether that be body mind spaces or pure mind spaces and there is no difference really! Mind is mind! In witnessing, there is no-mind! I am in no way negating the intelligence of the mind, the mind is useful! I am saying there is being beyond it!

I am not denying your experiences at all. It is the aim of the spiritual world to locate the ‘being’ beyond mind. It is well documented. In the version you are following, with the Ramana Maharshi lineage, one discovers that one is That. In other lineages or paths one discovers one’s ‘original face’, the Source, Existence, Unconditional Love or whatever. Despite everyone’s insistence of having a personal realization or a having found ‘my’ truth, the experience in the Eastern no-mind tradition is a common feeling (an emotional backed thought) of Self aggrandizement – of being bigger, vaster, grander than one’s ordinary self.

It is indeed a wonderful state – it took Richard 11 years to dig his way out of his Altered State of Consciousness. I only had some briefer, but nevertheless telling experiences of this state, which is why I know very well what you are talking about.

But in the end it is only a feeling. There is no ‘other world’. There is no God. There is no ‘Universe’ as in ‘the Universe is taking care of me’. All these things are but phantoms of our imagination, given credence by the fairy tales passed down for millennia.

I see in your last post you have now become ‘the universe experiencing itself as a human being’. Is this some ‘miracle conversion’ perhaps? seeing you talk of seeing us as ‘like born again Christians’? Hallelujah ...!

Your experience is that you feel that you are ‘the Universe experiencing itself as a human being’ Polar opposites – 180 degrees opposite.

Despite your frantic insistence to the contrary, and now your twisting of words and wayward adopting of terminology – we are talking of two vastly different experiences.

The spiritual experience (ASC) is cerebral-affective and the PCE experience is sensate only.

The spiritual experience (ASC) gives credence to the psychic entity within the body resulting in Self-aggrandizement – to realise you are That, to become The Universe ... albeit temporarily trapped in a human body ... but when ‘your body’ dies ... then ‘you’ are freed!

The PCE is an experience when one realises that both the psychological and psychic entity stand in the road of one’s destiny – to be the physical universe experiencing itself as a human being ... when the entity dies ... then you are actually free!

Many, many people read what Richard, Vineeto and I are saying and all say it is the ‘same thing’ as the mystics have been saying. I was attracted to Richard initially on the same basis and it took me many months to understand the difference. I was, however, more attracted to the down-to-earthness of it. Things like being able to live with a woman in peace and harmony, sorting out sex, being happy and harmless...

But that was just me.

Yours sincerely.

Thanks for your note back. At this stage I welcome any feedback. I note that you say you have a mature faith and I don’t doubt it. Most sincere seekers are driven to seek freedom from their own suffering and to find a solution to the appalling universal suffering of Humanity. I found that the tried and true beliefs needed questioning at least, because they haven’t produced the goods – an end to sorrow and malice in human beings. A paltry few rise Above It All to become saints or gurus or Gods, but fat lot of good it does the mere mortals left behind.

So, as you said in your letter, ‘the answers are never entirely what we think they will be’, and what I’m proposing is that they lie 180 degrees in the other direction. Unfortunately for those who believe in a heaven and hell, this direction can appear to be towards hell or evil or madness. But as the Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, the Truth are all nothing but beliefs, ideals, morals and ethics, then perhaps this imaginary hell is only a fantasy as well. Maybe then Human beings can stop needing to worship fictitious gods, following ancient Wisdom that is riddled with good and evil spirits and energies, and fight appalling wars with each other as to which God is the ‘only’ god or whose particular version of the Truth is the ‘only’ truth. Then this appalling scenario of suffering and sacrifice will end and we will come to our senses both figuratively and literally. To realise we are one species on the planet, that there are about 6 billion of us, that we already live in paradise, and begin the task of removing exactly what is in the road of us experiencing this paradise on earth, not in some hoped for after-life.

I found that I had been imbued with a very shonky set of beliefs, that made up ‘who’ I thought I was, and further that I was born with a set of animal instincts – fear, aggression, nurture and desire – that could drive me to revert to animal behaviour at any time. When cornered, or when push came to shove, I would be ready to kill and die for my beliefs and enjoy being malicious even to the point of wanting to kill someone. This realisation was shattering for me, for I realized that the source of malice and sorrow was in me and I was the only one who could rid myself of this alien being inside.

It’s no small thing to realize, as one has identified both the source of the problem and the direction in which the solution to the mystery of life lays. And then off I strolled on a most extra-ordinary journey to freedom as one journeys beyond belief and imagination and discovers the actual, factual, physically delightful universe, here, now as experienced by the senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell, thoughts – all clear and pure and perfect – the breeze on my legs, the bird calling outside, the hands tapping on the keyboard as I write to you. Life was meant to be easy, simple, direct, sensual, delightful and carefree.

Experiencing paradise on earth, here, now, before physical death is possible in my experience. But I’ve got off on one of my raves. I guess what I am saying is: I think it is high time for us all to seriously begin to question the commonly-held belief in the existence of gods, spirits, energies, entities or aliens. The gods, after all, have promised so much and delivered so little! I just gave up waiting for Godot to sort out the mess I was.

So, good luck to you and may you have serendipitous happenings. Thanks again for your note, I do appreciate your response.

He has something to write about that is invaluable for any who are sufficiently interested. The writings on the AF web-site probably total well over a million words and yet are but a drop in the ocean compared to the trillions and squillions of words parroting and trumpeting the ancient spiritual gooblygook.

But no one reads all of them or his words.

No, all seekers of freedom peace and happiness are seduced by the ancient spiritual gooblygook for t’is sweet music to the soul and very, very few even bother to read spiritual words with a sensible clear eye for they are usually in-love with the whole fairy tale idea of spirituality.

Actual Freedom is a new third alternative that has only recently been pioneered and will appeal neither to fervent believers or cynical disgruntlites. To be interested one needs to have a burning dissatisfaction with one’s life as-it-is coupled with a healthy scepticism about the traditional spiritual path. I say scepticism deliberately for if one has sunk to the level of cynicism one may not have sufficient naiveté to even consider that it is possible to become actually free of the human condition. One definitely needs a pioneering spirit in order to reject the tried and failed and set off following the words and experiences of a madman and a handful of others. Stubbornness, bloody-mindedness and perseverance are other qualities that come to mind, but a burning dissatisfaction with your life as-it-is is the most essential.

By the way, the other reason no-one reads his words is that the few who read even a bit are unwilling to point others to the fact that a third alternative exists. You have at least read a bit of what he has written I take it. You even asked Richard if he would write something for your Web site, which he did, yet now I see you have taken it off a mere fortnight later.

Maybe it is actions like these that contribute to the fact that no one reads his words?

You seem interested in what others think of him, his appearance, etc. but what do you make of the content of what he is saying?

*

When I serendipitously came across Richard three years ago, his writing only consisted of his Journal and I avidly read it front to back many times and I would dip into it whenever I deliberately made the time available. It took me months and months, often contemplating sentence by sentence, to even begin to understand the mind-bending enormity of the fact that everyone has got it wrong – everybody is looking 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

As I managed to free myself of my spiritual beliefs and became virtually free of malice and sorrow, but your writings on women seem quite lusty I swapped my car for a computer and sat down to write a journal that described the process that I went through. I wanted to record it fresh in order that the excitement, passion and adventure did not get lost as my memory faded. It is written with unabashed fervour for this new third alternative, so you may find it inspiring.

I say ‘may’ deliberately for it has evoked zilch response from those people I gave it to read. It’s proved a popular failure in the spiritual world which I take as a sign that it must be good.

Really – why?

I would have been suspicious if it was popular precisely because everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong. What is popular, fashionable or rebelled against is that which is within the human condition. What I write about is freedom from the human condition and ‘self’-immolation – not a popular subject in a ‘self’-possessed world.

It was about 8 years later after looking ever deeper into it that I awoke one morning and from the time the eyes opened until they closed in sleep that night there took place a complete transformation of what was left of this being. The ego was dead, there was no god to take its place. It was clear that the very words we use to communicate were a symptom of an underlying illness of misidentification. That we had evolved in such a way as to turn everything into abstractions and rarely, if ever, saw what was real before our eyes.

To regard that which is physical, tangible, palpable, visible, touchable, smellable, eatable, hearable as an illusion is a trick of the impassioned mind that requires enormous effort. In the East this effort requires the torturous abandonment of sensible thinking and common sense – giving rise to the term ego death and the emergence of what could well be termed soulism – a feeling-only state of delusion. The lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning psychological and psychic entity that is the self becomes the Self – cunningly feeling Oneness, Wholeness, Timeless and Spaceless. The Eastern pursuit of ‘Ego-death’ has proven to be a very tragic delusion, for one becomes completely dissociated from what is actual as evidenced by the senses. This means that one renounces the world, both real and actual and begins a process of turning away, turning in, letting go, withdrawing, disidentifying and finally complete dissociation aka Enlightenment. The reason I use the word tragic is that spiritual seekers – many of whom began the spiritual search to find a way to bring about peace on earth – have now been seduced into turning away from the endemic malice and sorrow in the physical world we human beings live in and now regard it as illusionary, not real. They regard the spiritual world as REAL, the normal world as a nightmare to be avoided and the actual physical world as a dream created in their own minds.

The question I ran for a long time is ‘Has everyone got it 180 degrees wrong?’ The fact that all these theories of human existence on earth were cooked up thousands of years ago was the beginning of my doubts. The other thing I found as I contemplated on the question was that it started to explain an awful lot of things about why the spiritual path that didn’t work.

I do not regard the above as illusion. I totally enjoy all the wonder of this world.

Again a look at what you have said on this list might help clarify your position on what it is you sensately experience with your eyes, ears, smell, touch and taste and how you see all the fighting and suffering in the world–

Enlightenment/ awakening etc., etc., are just one part of an infinite process. It is only a beginning when we awaken to the madness that we have been dreaming. It only lets us see that we were dreaming and that the ego was just a small part of a much larger process.

So, you see all the fighting and suffering in the world as madness that we are dreaming and not as an illusion. Is this not the difference between seeing something as a dream and seeing something as an illusion splitting hairs? Do not both descriptions point to the fact that you regard the madness as unreal – i.e. not actual?

No one who sees we are living in a dream finds it unimportant. The natural action is to try to awaken all beings you come in contact with.

Again you clearly say that you see we are living in a dream.

It was clear that the very words we use to communicate were a symptom of an underlying illness of misidentification. That we had evolved in such a way as to turn everything into abstractions and rarely, if ever, saw what was real before our eyes.

Now you indicate that we ‘turn everything into abstractions’, yet another word that indicates that our perception of the world, prior to awakening, is unreal as in dreamlike/abstract.

I have seen that it isn’t so much that we are acting from our animal instinctual conditioning as it is what took place as we developed the ability to abstract life into words, pictures, concepts, etc. As that process developed what had been our instinct to protect our bodies was carried over into feeling a need to protect the images we had of ourselves. The ego has always been just conditioned thought that formed as a sense of personal identity. <Snip> There is in reality no such entity. All wars, all hatred, all suffering ultimately comes from that process.

Again, prior to awakening, you had developed ‘the ability to abstract life’ – which presumable includes ‘all the wars, all hatred, all suffering’ – into ‘words pictures and concepts, etc.’ This abstraction is the result of the ego – as personal identity, as our image we have of ourselves or just conditioned thought – and when the ego disappears and we awaken, ‘all the wars, hatred and suffering’ are seen to be the result of the abstraction of our conditioned thought. This torturous explanation as to the reasons for human malice and sorrow leaves me lost for words – a rare occurrence, indeed.

There is so much more than all the surface images we see in the so-called normal life.

So we can add ‘surface images’ to dreamlike and abstract as words used to describe the pre-awakened perception of the world, but you don’t regard it as an illusion. Hmmmm.

As for ‘I totally enjoy all the wonder of this world.’ you have also posted –

What you describe doesn’t seem to be an unconditional enjoyment and wonder. The main condition you place on your enjoyment is that you regard all ‘all wars, all hatred, all suffering’ as being just the result of a process of ‘conditioned thought’ – i.e. a dream/ abstraction/ surface image that merely goes on in the brain. This sounds awfully like dissociation to me.

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There had been within this being a very subtle sense that this was all somewhat spiritual. Then about a month ago the last vestige of that feeling fell through. It was like another deeper satori only this time it destroyed even that subtle sense of otherness. We are just life taking place. It is so profound and yet so very very simple. No one becomes enlightened. There is no one there to become enlightened. It is all a wonderful mystery, that shall always remain a mystery. It is joy beyond any thing the mind can conceive of and yet it is as simple as pure sound. There are no godmen or gods. There is just THIS. It is far more than any words can ever express, yet it is the nothing that is everything, yet never a thing. Get simple.

What you are describing is the process of dissociation from the ‘real’ world and its miseries and violence. Unfortunately one also dissociates even further from the actual physical world thus going even further away from the chance of peace on earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body.

What I am saying seems pretty simple to me but I live in the actual world and not the spiritual world.

More nonsense. I am perfectly aware of the suffering going on it this world. As is all the members of this group who you keep telling as though you are the only one who sees this. I do not dissociate with the actual physical world. No awake person does. It is from seeing the need to bring about peace in this world that I do the little that I am able to point out where the real problem is.

Okay, again you seem to be engaging in petty shifty semantics –

To quote from your teachings on the list –

All we can do is go as deeply into the whole process of how the mind is identifying with beliefs, images, fear, suffering, hatred, etc., etc., and when you are least expecting it all that will drop away and the perspective will make the shift and it will be so clear that you will not have any doubt at all, you will be awake.

It is clear from the words you use that you are talking of disidentifying from ‘all suffering, hatred etc.’ that is going on in the actual physical world. No amount of bluster will blow away your words for they are accurate transcriptions copied from your posts to this list.

As for, ‘you may also see where I am coming from’ – where I see you coming from is a position of back-peddling and I would only encourage you to keep doing it all the way totally out of the spiritual world. Most people think there are only two worlds – the real world or the spiritual world, but if one dares to step out of all illusion there is an actual physical-only world of purity and perfection and the evidence of this is the pure consciousness experience. It far exceeds Enlightenment for all the capricious feelings and unfulfilled promises of purity and perfection of the spiritual world are experienced as an actuality in a ‘self’-less state – a perfection and purity that is rock-solid, sensately experienced, touchable, visible, tastable, smellable, audible, ever-present, each moment again.

Believe what you wish about what you think is ‘back-peddling’. It means nothing to me.

And yet you now seem to be ‘flexing your spiritual muscles’ on the mailing list a bit more by putting down other teachers since I made this comment. But then again, this could well be just a coincidence.

I have no problem with all you say about this rock-solid world. I too feel the same way. Except there is more to it than the surface, and it is just as real.

Aye indeed, for you do not live in this rock-solid world for you see it as merely the surface. Where you spend most of your time is in the spiritual world that you, and many others, believe underlays this rock-solid world. By holding any spiritual belief you can never be actually here in this physical rock-solid world of sensual delight, purity and perfection. I always find it kind of cute that spiritualists insist that they are here – in the actual world where we flesh and blood human beings live – whereas they are desperately trying to be ‘there’ in the spiritual world.

It’s good that you have made the distinction between where you live and where I live so crystal clear. You see I have an enormous yes to being right here, right now in the rock-solid physical actual world, whereas you have an enormous yes to being somewhere else in the spiritual world.

We do indeed live in different worlds...

Your story has reminded me of the fact that it is this acknowledging of aggression in oneself that is the key to wanting to change irrevocably. If one only wants happiness for oneself then that is insufficient motive or intent to get stuck into the business of irrevocably changing oneself. It needs an altruistic motive rather than the mere self-gratification of being happy and that motive is to be actually peaceful – to do no harm to one’s fellow human beings, as in not instinctually feeling aggression towards others, not instinctually feeling sorrow for others, not being blindly driven to nurture others and not being blindly driven to desire power over others.

This facet is one that I had forgotten when I recently penned the ‘map’ of the path but it is one that is vital to success on the path. To emphasize the harmless part of becoming happy and harmless is to tap into a well of innate altruism in the human species that will guarantee one success on the path to Actual Freedom. Again this is diametrically opposite to the spiritual path where self-gratification is the aim, transcendence of evil is the process and a feeling of superiority to (as in more holier than thou) and compassion (as in pity) for others more ignorant and less-realized is the inevitable result.

All Spiritual /Religious teachings emphasize mindfulness, watching or awareness as a way of disidentifying or dissociating from wrong, bad or Evil thoughts and feelings, so the practitioner can identify or associate with the right, good or Divine thoughts and feelings. This is what is known as adopting ethical codes – rights and wrongs – or moral values – goods and bads. There is no way a person who has followed spiritual/religious teachings to the point where they have convinced themselves that they are absolutely right, perfectly good and completely Divine would ever admit that I am upset, I am sad or I am fearful, let alone recognizing there is evil in ‘me’. The best they get to is ‘I felt anger arising’ but it was not the real ‘me’ – this is called denial and dissociation from one’s own feelings. The method I am proposing, should you care but to skim over it, is the opposite of this spiritual method of ‘self’-deceit. It is a thorough, ongoing, moment-to-moment, ‘self’-investigation of both the good and bad feelings that arise from the instinctual passions with the pure intent to eliminate their insidious influence.

This is directly opposite to the spiritual/religious teachings where ‘I’ struggle to be mindlessly ‘present in the moment’ in a grim reality with the aim of becoming a grand and glorious ‘Me’ who feels eternally Present in a Greater Reality of ‘my’ own imagination. The method I have outlined is aimed at eliminating any ‘I’ or ‘me’ being present that inevitably prevents the always ever-present purity and perfection of this moment from becoming apparent.

No. The method outlined is specifically designed to avoid the traditional spiritual practice of ‘disenfranchisement’, as in disassociation, and to ‘remove attachment’, as in becoming detached from the actual world of people, things and events where we human beings actually live.

No. The method outlined is specifically designed to focus one’s attention on the immediate possibility of being happy and harmless so as rid oneself of instinctual malice and sorrow and not trip out into some form of higher consciousness or altered states. The whole point is to get one’s head out of the clouds and come down-to-earth. One of the very first aspects of applying the method I have outlined would be to question one’s own utterly ‘self’-ish investment in believing that one’s consciousness is higher than others’.

This is why only a rare few will bother to read carefully what I write, contemplate upon it and start to be honestly aware of their feelings as they arise, for to do so is threatening to their highly valued spiritual identities. But to fail to do so is to miss out on the opportunity to deeply question and experientially investigate one’s own psyche in order to discover exactly what it is to be a human being on the planet.

No. The method outlined is specifically designed to clean oneself up of both the good and bad feelings that arise from the instinctual passions such that an irrevocable change happens that results in peace in this lifetime, in the marketplace, in the world as-it-is and people-as-they. There is nothing relative about the actual world – it is tangible, palpable, vibrant, lively, ever-present, and happening this very moment.

I suggest you carefully read what is written rather than rewrite what is written so that it suits your old-world teachings and spiritual beliefs. Your carelessness hobbles you to the Tried and Failed methods of the ancient ones and prevents you from carefully considering the third alternative that is being offered. I do understand that you do not know what is being offered for it took me months and months of careful considered word for word reading and a good deal of thinking and nutting out to begin to understand. But the rewards of abandoning the Tried and Failed spiritual path and applying the method outlined has resulted in a freedom, peace and happiness that is beyond my wildest dreams. The result far surpasses anything offered or achieved in the spiritual world, for this freedom, peace and happiness is actual and eminently liveable in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are.

And by going into this rap...which seems to have become a repeated practiced rehearsed speech, you totally missed communicating with me. Why should you or I think I’d be interested in another speech? The words come from so far away, they don’t come even close to relating to you relating to me. It looks as through you are continuing to avoid being in touch with what is real in your life. And I do not perceive much real in what you have said. So I’ll offer you another opportunity to come closer. Talk to me if you like, but don’t bother talking at me, no lectures. I get enough of them in school.

My experience is it is impossible to communicate factually and directly with someone who is firmly locked into a particular belief or concept. All I ever get is objections, but I understand as it was the same for me when I first considered the fact that ‘everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong’ and that included me. That meant I had to question EVERYTHING I took to be true, right, good, Sacred, Holy, Wise, Absolute, given, common knowledge, my experience, etc. All of the social conditioning, all of who I thought I was, all of who I felt I was. It was a big job, the bulk of which took some 12 months, and the major obstacles were, in my experience, pride and fear.

So I’ll resist a rave about how good it is to be free of it all, because you will think I’m lecturing you.

To summarize these differences – Eastern spirituality is archaic and superstition based, actualism is contemporary and scientifically based,

Scientifically based? Being a scientist, I can’t say many scientists would agree.

In matters that concern the search for the meaning of life every person, no matter what their culture, gender, inclinations or indoctrinations, remain convinced that the only alternative to materialism is the archaic superstition-based wisdom of spiritualism.

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Eastern spirituality dabbles in the superficial layer of the social identity, actualism tackles the fundamental issue of the instinctual identity,

Well I don’t take that at all from my readings from various sources. I take conditioning to mean all kinds of conditioning including that endowed by evolution.

I await the evidence from your various sources to substantiate your claim that the spiritual teachings tackle the fundamental issue of the instinctual identity and that they propose eliminating the instinctual passions that are part and parcel of the genetically-encoded survival program.

By the way, this survival program is not conditioning endowed by evolution over time – it is genetically encoded as an indivisible package in each and every human being born, i.e. it is not a progressive conditioning, it is an instantaneous condition. The instinctual program is the (human) condition and it is universal to every human being whereas social conditioning is individual in that it has slight cultural and gender variations.

Whilst you can fiddle with conditioning, and if you become a practicing actualist you can eliminate practically all of it – the only way to end the condition itself – as in, become free of the human condition – is to cease being an instinctually-driven ‘being’.

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You might notice that I am not focussing my ‘high powered linguistic microscope on tiny shades of meaning and become lost in the minutiae of stylistic differences’, but rather I am focussing on the broad and fundamental differences between spiritualism and actualism –

I still think it’s style over substance. You’re not very convincing.

I’m not trying to convince you of anything. It is you who have come to this list with a mission to convince the list members that actualism is nothing but a new style of spiritualism. I’m simply pointing out the fact that the evidence you offer in support of your case is not at all convincing and that the differences between actualism and spiritualism are differences of substance, not style.

I know well that this is difficult to grasp – it is not an easy thing to consider that there is something brand-new in human history – a discovery that draws a line across a whole field of human belief and endeavour and says ‘tried and failed’ – ‘time for a completely new approach’.

In the last few years I had to do a similar thing when I decided I wanted to stop being a pen-and-ink architect and become a silicon-chip architect, or stop being a Neanderthal architect and become a 21^st. Century architect as I termed it. For a while I kept my drawing board whilst I tried to learn CAD but eventually I came to realize that the only way I could learn something new was by taking the plunge and throwing out my old drawing board. Since then I haven’t looked back and I am so glad I took the plunge, as it were.

The methods of Actualism offer interesting perspectives leading to the same freedom on offer elsewhere. The term ‘actual’ is just a re-branding.

Re-branded, hey. Okay, let’s take a walk down that way then.

Now presumably the reason that one would re-brand something would be to attract customers – put something old in a new wrapper, replete with a logo and some catchy words, put into motion an advertising program and sit back and wait for the gullible to take the bait. It’s a good theory and it’s what everybody else does but it only works if your product is the same as what everyone else is selling.

However, if your product is indeed different, then those who want the old product will eventually go back to the old product whilst those few who are genuinely looking for something that is different think themselves lucky that they have found something that is indeed new.

To give you a practical example, when I wrote my journal, Vineeto published it in paperback form with an eye-catching cover. I then took it to a local bookshop to see if they would stock it. One lady took a copy to read but gave it back to me saying that ‘while it was interesting … you are going too far’ – the ‘you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ objection. She realized that what I had written about was not spiritualism, but was something beyond spiritualism and she knew it was not for her customers. So much for re-branding.

This mailing list also puts paid to your proposition. Whilst we have those who persist in believing that actualism is re-branded spiritualism there is an increasing amount of contributors who report that, after a good deal of initial difficulty, they now understand that actualism is not re-branded spiritualism.

Secondly, Mr. Wren Lewis makes reference to what he terms a ‘psychological survival-system’, indicating that the survival-system is a mental process – and not a sequential process that is firstly physical, secondarily affective and only lastly cognitive.

Wren-Lewis doesn’t want to speculate on the origin of the psychological survival-system but you think you have it sussed.

Yep. And not only intellectually, but experientially as well. Unlike Mr. Wren-Lewis, I was interested enough to find out for myself the nuts and bolts of how the instinctual passions inevitably give rise to malice and sorrow and how they prevent the free operation of benign thinking and considerate action.

It’s only a mental process you say, always was, always will be, thus implicitly extending Wren-Lewis’s words into a domain that he doesn’t want to speculate in.

Your comment is a sure sign that you don’t read what I say. If you care to read again what I said you will see that I put mental (cognitive) last on the list and it’s a very poor last at that. The instinctual passions are passions and passions are affective in nature, they are not a mental process.

Have you ever heard the expression ‘I suddenly had a fit of rage’ or ‘I found myself in the grip of jealousy’ or ‘I instantly fell in love’ or ‘I fell into a pit of despair’ or ‘I was overwhelmed with grief’ or ‘I was immediately gripped by fear’, or ‘I wanted … with all my heart’. Contrary to what some men think – these are passionate reactions, not mental processes at work.

[It’s only a mental process you say, always was, always will be, thus implicitly extending Wren-Lewis’s words into a domain that he doesn’t want to speculate in.] Well if you can do that then so can I. The quote implies that the psychological survival-system is inherited somehow – perhaps it’s genetic and thus quite physical, affective and cognitive.

Your speculation only proves that you are as disinterested in finding out the facts as Mr. Wren-Lewis was.

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Not only does he not understand how the survival-system operates, he has no idea how it is passed from one generation to the next and it has apparently never occurred to him that it originated in the human species because the survival-system is common to all sentient animals.

Yes. Very good. Perhaps you should contact John Wren-Lewis and further his thinking in this area. I’m sure he’d be sympathetic since you’re both thinking in the same direction, but you guys have gone further. No argument from me about that.

But that’s the whole thrust of your adversarial stance on this mailing list – it was the very reason you came to this list in the first place – you do argue with the fact that we have gone further than the spiritualists have gone.

You have done nothing but rile against the fact that someone has found something new in human history – something that takes the whole matter of the nature of human consciousness into a field that the revered ancient spiritualists had neither the wit, nor the interest, nor the daring to investigate.

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So much for Mr. Wren Lewis’ thinking about the effects of instinctual survival passions – he is doing no more than trotting out the Eastern spiritual party line that thinking and conditioning ‘cuts off so-called normal human consciousness from its roots in that other, impersonal consciousness’, that which is also known as God by whatever name. I can only assume that this will be another of those quotes you offer in support of your stance but then don’t necessarily endorse?

Tut tut. You’ve falsely labelled me there. I printed this quote to show that others have been thinking up your tree. Same cat, different dogs barking.

Not the same cat at all. Mr. Wren-Lewis thinks that thought and human conditioning is the problem whereas actualism reveals that the problem is the genetically-encoded instinctual passions and the human condition itself.

Careful observation will reveal that the worry response emanating from instinctual fear is not fabricated – as in made-up or manufactured – but rather it is directly associated with the automatic instinctual response. The genetically programmed thoughtless instinctual response together with its immediate feeling aftermath, whether it lasts a few minutes or a few hours, are inseparable and any attempts to intellectually separate them can only result in dissociation.

I’ll just offer a comment on the matter of observation as it is relevant to all who have been attracted to Eastern spirituality or Eastern philosophy at some point in their lives. Vineeto and I have often discussed the fundamental differences between the Eastern practice of self-observation and the actualism practice of ‘self’-awareness as well as reflecting upon how difficult it was in the early days to stop being a dissociative observer and start becoming aware of exactly how I am experiencing this moment of being alive.

The fundamental difference between the two practices is due to the diametrically opposite intent of each of the practices – the aim of the spiritual practice is to cultivate a dissociated identity in order to avoid feeling the full range of instinctual passions, whereas the aim of actualism is to instigate radical change in order to become happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are.

Perhaps an example of how the actualism practice of ‘self’-awareness works in practice will serve to make this difference clear –

‘The final straw came as I waited to meet her one evening and she was late. As the time ticked away, so my mind raced away, and after about thirty minutes I was furious. How could she be late? How could anything else or anyone else be more important in her life than me? As my fury built and built, as my mind churned over countless possibilities as to why she was late, suddenly I began to see the stupidity of it all. Here I was, comfortably sitting at a seaside café, drink in hand, looking at a spectacular sunset on a warm summer’s evening. I’m involved in the adventure of a lifetime, I’ve found out more about what it is to be a human being in the last months than I have in a lifetime, there is this wonderful woman in my life – and I’m being neurotic because she is thirty minutes late! Gradually I came out of it and was able to be where I was, delighting in the balmy evening air and the gaiety of the scene as the last of the beach-goers drifted home.

When Vineeto arrived she apologised for being late, and I explained what had happened to me. We had a beach walk, dinner at a nearby restaurant, and tootled home to bed.

Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why were there increasingly misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what Vineeto was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. Further, I realised that I had been jealous, possessive, demanding and obsessive with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when the impossible demands of love are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to disappointment, resentment and eventually hate. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that unless I changed my behaviour this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure. This was my last chance and I was watching it wilt away ... and I was actively causing it to happen. At this point I wasn’t interested so much in why I was acting this way, I realised I had to stop!

Armed with the conviction of the blindingly obvious, I confronted Vineeto with the news. I told her I was simply going to stop battling her and acting the way I had been. I remember her response as somewhat bewildered and unbelieving, but then again I knew that at least I had to stop the torment in me. What happened in the ensuing week was quite remarkable. I found that the strength of my intention made me able to completely drop this destructive behaviour. Somehow I knew this was the only course of action I could take to make this relationship work and I knew it was my last chance. If I was going to beat this thing I had to do it now!

A wonderful calmness came over me; no longer was I thinking about Vineeto when we were apart, and when I was with her I was no longer suspicious, doubtful, impatient or moody. I began to accept her as she was. I was no longer driven to change her. This then brought a corresponding ease in myself for I was able just to be me. After all, the only person I can change is me and I was working on exactly that.’ Peter’s Journal, Love

No philosophical umming and ahhing, no dissociating from unwanted feelings, no remaining aloof, no blaming others and so on – just the simple momentary awareness of the feelings that were preventing me from being happy coupled with an intense yearning to change in order to become actually harmless, come what may.

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Thanks for your recent responses to this most interesting thread. I’ve attempted to distil the essence, hopefully not obfuscating the contexts.

I notice that while you have addressed this post to both myself and Vineeto and have headed your post ‘The Magic of It All’, the content relates to the content of a thread entitled ‘The universe’. So I have responded and maintained the previous title.

You are not alone in playing the devil’s advocate to the business of devoting one’s life to becoming happy and harmless. By far the bulk of the correspondence on the AF website are objectors.

Sounds a very reasonable approach if only because it is what I did. It became very obvious to me early on that actualism was not a philosophy or a non-spiritual belief but that it was solely – and I do mean solely – a pragmatic do-it-yourself business.

You may find ‘the universe’ chapter in my journal a useful aid in your contemplations about the nature of the universe, not for its academic argumentation but rather for its common sense.

Speaking personally, I never saw any sense at all in splitting ‘me’ and ‘my identity’ into two parts. I had tried that in my spiritual years and saw that it was a wank.

The actualism process – the sincere intent to become happy and harmless – will evince a ‘self’-awareness that then generates the necessary changes so that you incrementally become more happy and more harmless, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. It’s a profoundly simple scientific process – detect cause, eliminate cause (as in instigate the necessary change), eliminate effect.

All ‘you’ have to do, if you really want to do it, is do it.

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