Selected Correspondence Peter

Naiveté

A post came in from No 99 a while ago that I had earmarked to respond to but didn’t get around to. The relevant part of his question was this –

Where does it say that the universe is peaceful and perfect? Is there a mission statement for the universe to only experience being happy and harmless here on earth? If all is the universe, what is all the stuff that actualists are trying to be rid of?

When I sit and pause and look at what is now, I can see everything as what is and then any movement seems to be a subtle shift in view, discernment or preference, or, as I often do, make a stand, draw a line in the sand and attempt to enforce this stance. What I have read from the actualists seems to support the latter.

There seems to be much judgement and condemnation of people and the human condition on this site, which to me, is incongruent and very un-actual, according to your parameters, of what is ‘actual’.

Again, this isn’t to make you wrong, it’s just that it doesn’t make sense to me. What you claim and what you say are incongruent in some areas. No 99, Coffee with Richard 24/4/06

Recently a post came in from No 100 asking very similar questions so I thought to respond to both together –

What is peace-on-earth is already always existing? What does peace on earth mean? What kind of peace? How is it equivalent to saying ‘it is already just here, right now, as it always has been and always will be’ No 100 Naiveté 10/5/06

Whilst I can understand the difficulty that some people have with the notion that peace on earth already exists and has always existed, let alone grasp that this is a fact – and particularly so if they cannot remember having had a pure consciousness experience themselves – this need not be so, particularly in the current times we live in.

One of the most telling examples of the already existing and always existing peace on earth for me was looking at photos and videos taking by human being beings from spacecraft whilst orbiting earth, journeying to and from the moon or even whilst standing on Earth’s moon. I have written of this before to another correspondent –

‘Some of the human beings who have seen the globe of the earth from space have had a perspective of this planet that temporarily did not include borders between warring tribes, conflicts over varying beliefs and the ingrained despair that typifies human habitation on earth. From their perspective, outside of Humanity as it were, the pristine purity and the peerless perfection of this azure planet was startlingly evident, so much so that some even had life-changing religious realizations.

A practicing actualist can also have the similar perspective as did those astronauts of this astounding planet we flesh and blood humans actually live on, whilst also having a down-to-earth overarching perspective of the ‘closed-loop, ‘self’-perpetuating psychic and psychic nightmare’ that is the human condition. This clear-eyed perspective of the disparity between the abundant cornucopia this planet actually is and the grim passionate battle for survival still being waged by its human habitants provides the constant fuel for my drive for an actual freedom from the human condition’. Peter, List AF, No. 23, 7.5.2002

I was so taken by the blue and fluffy white actuality of this planet that for a long time I had a photo of an earthrise taken from the moon’s surface as a desktop image on my computer in order to remind me everyday again of the sheer magnificence of the peerless perfection and peacefulness of this planet.

Of course one does not have to leave the planet or see photos of the planet taken from afar to gain such a perspective or to have such insights – I had a similar experience in the desert one evening whilst watching the red ball of the sun setting over the western horizon only to happen to turn around and be confronted by an equal-in-size red ball of the moon rising over the eastern horizon, directly opposite. It was immediately apparent that this very earth itself was also a similar ball hanging in space and a little reflection revealed that the borders and boundaries, conflicts and chaos, emotional trials and self-centred tribulations on this ball are all human impassioned fabrications. The reason I mention this experience is that this experience in the desert was not a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience (and nor was it an altered state of consciousness) – it was simply an opportune moment whereby the actuality of the perfection of this physical planet became apparent and obvious.

I have also written of similar experiences in my Journal–

‘I would deliberately take the midnight-to-dawn watch, alone on deck at the helm, while the others slept below. The sky was velvet black, carelessly strewn with a myriad of diamond stars, the moonlight dancing on the dark ocean. The sky was intense, endless in depth; the ocean fluid, also seemingly endless in depth, and I and the boat I was on, insignificant in size and location. The nights were superb; it was a constant pleasure and delight just to be alive – just to be here! These were nights when I understood the vast endlessness of the physical universe and there was no question of a god or an ‘energy’ or a ‘creator’ of any sort. It was all actually sensational – purely of the senses. The warm feel of the tropical air, the salty smell of the ocean, the movement of the boat, the sound of the water on the hull, the delightful feast to the eyes – the vast stillness and purity of it all. I was no-where in particular, a mere speck on the globe of the earth, hanging somewhere in an infinite black space. The days had no names, the hours no numbers, so time had no reference, I was simply here’. Peter’s Journal The Universe.

Many people I have talked to have had comparable experiences or similar insights such as these at some stage in their life whilst sensately experiencing the magnificence of the physical universe but most have affectively interpreted – or misinterpreted – what they are experiencing in exactly the way human beings have always habitually done – by feeling awed (at the work of some mythical Creator), by feeling grateful (to some mythical Creator) or by becoming totally delusional (by feeling that they are at one with the Creator or indeed that they are the Creator himself, herself or itself). When the emotions take hold of the experience in this way what is totally obscured is the actuality of the physical experience itself – a taste of the already and always existing peace on earth.

What I am attempting to point out in this response is that one does not necessarily have to remember having had a PCE to twig to the fact that peace on earth already, always exists – there are a myriad of clues laying all round that allude to this fact – providing one is willing to let go of one’s accrued real-world cynicism or one’s imbibed spiritual-world fantasies that is. And the cute thing is once you start to become aware of these clues, one’s own innate naiveté will be not only rekindled but will begin to blossom … and this will in turn allow for the circumstances to be ripe for a PCE to occur, all by itself as it were.

Now, the real question goes to Vineeto & Peter only, as Richard never claims any quality except those which RIPEETO is so naively describing.

Peter, Vineeto, may you not find your lives completely wasted but profit in the best possible way from your ‘big leap’. I’m certain you will enjoy life with Richard. For taste’s sake, try not to be too hypocritical about honesty – and don’t, if possible to avoid, tell people you’re just being honest about honesty. Well, I guess it’s impossible to avoid. Human Comedy Goodbye List. 7/9/2005

Despite the fact that you asked a loaded question and not a real question and that your question was but a prelude to a premature evacuation the very next day, I’ll post the following as it is what I wrote immediately preceding the quote I sent to No 60 last night with regard to my honest-to-myself attentiveness of the full range and extent of my feelings –

‘Malice is a bit different as it is generally not upheld as a human virtue and most people even manage to deny it in themselves. It is always someone else who is cruel, jealous, vindictive or violent and I am simply responding to their malice! It was amazing to see in my own children unprovoked and unlearned acts of aggression. The idea that children are born innocent is just an idea, not a fact. I have some memories, even as a kid, of plotting revenge against someone – but of course most of the actual malicious actions were condemned. One didn’t break things, hit people, or say certain things – I was taught to behave ‘properly’. The trouble is, all the malice was then forced into cunning, clever and subversive actions that were to persist in my life. The willingness to tell a tale on someone as a subtle revenge is a classic. We call it gossiping, to disguise the maliciousness. I remember a few times actually having to will myself to stop, biting my tongue. The worst situation, of course, is in ‘relation-ship’ (or ‘battle-ship’) with a woman. The malice often took the form of withdrawal – an insidious revenge, but also a self-inflicted pain; a terrible price to pay in the long run.

I came to see a lot of New Age-spiritual-therapy behaviour as only thinly disguised malice. ‘I have to be honest with you’ or ‘I would like to share something with you’ is usually the opening line of someone who is about to take revenge or be spiteful. Again much of what we humans regard as entertainment is but our pleasure at witnessing malice and violence inflicted upon fellow human beings. Competitive sport is another arena for malice to be played out, whether watching or participating. A few times in my life the lid would really fly off and rage would surface, quickly followed by shame.

In particular I remember a time when we were working with some Indian stonemasons in Poona. One of the workers was doing something wrong despite my having just warned him. Well, I gave him a full serve of rage, only to discover afterwards that he really was doing it right all along. I was deeply ashamed, not only that I had lost my temper, but that I had done the typical thing at the time – chosen an Indian as my victim. A few months ago I even felt the thrill of what it would be like to kill someone, after reading a newspaper article about a murder, and that really brought malice home to me. To experience it in me that intensely was shocking indeed.’ Peters Journal Intelligence 1998

I remember once talking to someone on our balcony about the business of taking a good clear look at my feelings and beliefs – ‘to bring them out into the open in order to shine the bright light of awareness on them’ is the way that Richard has put it. As we talked, my visitor was somewhat bewildered as to why I would want to do it. He indicated that I was somehow kidding myself by wanting to be as happy and harmless as humanly possible – in fact, I got the impression that he thought me dishonest and insincere because his conviction was that to be ‘honest’ meant to cherish one’s feelings and to be ‘sincere’ meant to let them all hang out and to hell with everyone else.

Exploring and investigating the dark side of one’s own psyche while neither expression nor repressing is only one aspect of the business of examining one’s own feelings and passions – there are some very sweet aspects to be discovered as well. One exploration that is fascinating to make is to get in touch with one’s childhood naiveté. A lot of people are well acquainted with getting in touch with their childhood hurts and wounds – the times they were bullied, the times they were wrongly accused of something they didn’t do, the feelings of indigitation, the feelings of resentment, loneliness and so on … but I found that there were also wonderful memories of carefree days of leaving home in the morning and riding my bike for hours on end, either alone or with mates, simply riding for the fun of riding, exploring for the fun of exploring, being aimless for sheer exuberance of being aimless – the only restriction being that I needed to be home before dark. They were days immersed in a childhood guileless naiveté, the closet to being innocent that is possible within the human condition.

By the simple act of getting in touch with this childhood naiveté once again, I realized that it had never ever quite gone away in my later life – that despite all the trials and tribulations of later life I had never quite lost it entirely and bowed under to cynicism. On reflection, I guess this is why I was such a ‘fool’ or so ‘dishonest’ or so ‘insincere’ or so ‘hypocritical’ as to want to eliminate malice and sorrow from my life in order that I could again become as guileless and as carefree again as I was in those childhood days.

Of course, as you have rightly pointed out, this is not an actual freedom from malice and sorrow – it’s still ‘me’ being a feeling being – but for me feeling felicitous and being once-again naïve sure beats feeling miserable and being resentful.

However, the subject matter of this simplified presentation obviously passed you by because whilst you think the Introduction may be of use to others – ‘common food for the masses’, as you disparagingly put it – you yourself continue to show not the faintest interest in actualism itself. This clearly indicates that you have completely missed the most fundamental point made in the Introduction – that actualism is a do-it-yourself business, and not an ‘if-only-everybody-else-did-it’ philosophy.

If I ‘continue to show not the faintest interest in actualism itself’, then I wouldn’t have read it in the first place.

Which begs the question as to what motive and what attitude you had whilst reading it – to sincerely want to find out or to nit-pickingly find fault. There’s a world of difference between these ways of reading, as you may well discover if you read what is on offer on the AF website with less cynical eyes.

Obviously, I am exploring, albeit with perhaps, too healthy a dose of cynicism.

I noticed Richard made a comment about cynicism in his post so I won’t labour the point, other than to say that I never found anything healthy about cynicism. From what I remember, it’s not only a lead weight on one’s shoulders, it’s like walking around immersed in a grey fog of one’s own making.

Here is an exchange that you might find pertinent –

Gary – I seem to recall, as a child, having times when I had the most intense fascination with what I was doing at the time, whether I was playing with something or studying something, or just experiencing something. Later, these experiences I tried to re-create through drug use. The ordinary cares and woes fell away and there was this intense fascination and absorption in the moment and what I was experiencing. Later, and more recently, I found in the Pure Consciousness Experience what I was looking for: this incredible vibrancy, aliveness, scintillating, coruscating (all those Richard-words and more to describe the experience) quality. It is the most amazing thing when one shifts into apperception, and one experiences naiveté.

It is not for nothing that Richard describes naiveté as ‘the closest approximation to innocence one can have whilst being a ‘self’’. In this state of naiveté, there is such an experience of wonder and one is in touch immediately with the purity and pristine-ness of the physical actuality of the world around one. When this happens, one has connected with the long-sought Meaning of Life. The search is over – there is nowhere else to go.

One thing about the spiritual path that did not sit well with me, apart from feeling increasingly isolated and dissociated from the world of people, things and events, was the fundamental cynicism that underpins all spiritual belief – that the human experience is one of essential suffering. Because of this spiritual cynicism about life on earth meeting Richard, hearing of his experiences and reading his words was quite literally a breath of fresh air.

By taking on board what he had to say, and being able to relate to what he was saying by my own experience in a PCE, I was very soon able set off on the path to actual freedom. In doing so, I was able to forgo my cynicism and reconnect with my naiveté, I was able to cease practicing dissociation and begin being fascinated with being here, and I was able to begin the enthralling business of investigating all of ‘my’ beliefs and passions that make ‘me’ an inseparable constituent of the human condition of malice and sorrow.

Cynicism is the pits. It’s so delicious to have abandoned cynicism, to get in touch with my naiveté and devote myself fully to the business of becoming free from malice and sorrow. Peter to Gary 22.7.2002

As you read more on the website I can recommend stopping every now and again and deliberately making the effort to recall that experience. By remembering the flavour of that experience you will be more able to access the naiveté necessary to understand what is on offer on the site and you will thus be more able to read what is on offer with the clear eyes that I assume you had during that experience.

I do see the necessity for the naiveté that is mentioned here.

Naiveté is something that you have to actively rekindle. Given that you have said – ‘it’s more important for me to get rid of the negative than to seek the positive’ – you may well find it a little difficult to re-discover your naiveté.

So then give me a tip to rediscover naiveté if you would?

Obviously I can only talk about the things that tweaked my own naiveté – some things may strike a common cord whilst others may be idiosyncratic. My memory of my early stages of actualism is a bit fuzzy nowadays but contemplating on Richard’s writings was an absolutely vital aspect for me. I went looking for this passage as it is one that still sticks in my mind –

‘One surely has to be naive to contemplate the profound notion that this universe is benign, friendly. One needs to be naive to consider that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile. To the realist – the ‘worldly-wise’ – this appears like utter foolishness. After all, life is a ‘vale of tears’ and one must ‘make the best of a bad situation’ because one ‘can’t change human nature’; and therefore ‘you have to fight for your rights’. This derogatory advice is endlessly forthcoming; the put-down of the universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so. Surely, one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. How could all this be some ‘ghastly mistake’? To believe it all to be some ‘sick joke’ is preposterous, for such an attitude cuts one off from the perfection of this pure moment of being alive here in this fantastic actual universe.’ Richard’s Journal, Article 21, It is Impossible to Combat the Wisdom of the Real World

There is a lot in Richard’s writings that evokes naiveté, yet reading it is one thing but taking the time, and making the effort, to contemplate on what one reads is quite another. This is the work that is up to ‘you’ to do.

I had Richard’s journal by my bedside and would read a few paragraphs and then lay back and think about it a while or I would take myself off for a walk in a favourite place and just sit down and gaze at the world with soft eyes thinking about what I had read, what I had done with my life, what I was doing with my life and what I wanted to do with my life.

I also found it essential to stop beating myself up and start liking myself, to start to enjoy my own company which in turn led me to start being interested in being here, which in turn led to a naïve curiosity about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being.

I don’t know if that is of use to you but the first is obvious – read – and the second is equally important – contemplate – and the second will be best done at a time when you feel most relaxed and at ease.

*

If your sole aim is ‘to get rid of the negative’, as in stopping being cynical, the tendency is then to not replace it with anything – to not feel anything – to become an emotional emasculate if you like. Contrary to what some people think, actualism is not about not feeling. The actualism process is about minimizing the debilitating effects of the ‘bad’ emotions (malice, anxiety, resentment, sorrow, etc.) as well as minimizing the debilitating effects of the antidotal ‘good’ emotions (love, bliss, compassion, etc.) and actively promoting the felicitous emotions – the feelings that are associated with naiveté – a childlike curiosity, a fascination with being here, bonhomie, friendliness, amiability, cordiality, delight, wonder, amazement and so on.

Such a radical change does require the intent to do so, and does require a good deal of effort to do so, as felicitous feelings do not come naturally to world-wary instinctually-impassioned adults.

World wary or world weary?

Both. The constant need to be world-wary inevitably makes for world-weariness. Fear is the strongest of the instinctual passions and its effects are utterly wearying.

*

When I recalled my first PCE, it became clear to me that the way to get from ‘A’ – being normal – to ‘B’ – having an ongoing direct experience of actuality 24/7 – was that ‘I’ had to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless … and that this commitment had to be so total as to be an all-consuming obsession. I don’t want to gallop ahead too much, but the reason I mention this is to point to the essential link between becoming happy and harmless and becoming free of the human condition – they are one and the same path.

On another note and a popular topic of discussion on this list: while I have brought this up in the past regarding Richard’s claim of being the 1^st to be fully free of the human condition (I will use the actualist term). First I would like to say that regarding the ongoing discussion between No 59 and the ‘defenders of the faith’ (my term – no offence intended referring to Richard, Peter, Vineeto, No 23, et al) that I can clearly see No 59’s points.

I don’t find that particularly surprising given that you both apparently think highly of U.G. Krishnamurti. If you believe the words of someone who says that it is impossible to become free of malice and sorrow as is evidenced in the quotes at the bottom of this post, then it is understandable that both of you find Richard’s claim an anathema for it directly contradicts what U.G. Krishnamurti says.

That said, how can Richard or anyone know whether there was not some American Indian, Mayan, Incan, Aboriginal or any other from such an uprooted, extinct or rubbed-out indigenous culture and peoples who hadn’t accomplished the very same thing?

In your attempts to disprove Richard’s claim you have yet to provide any evidence that anyone else has become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow … let alone evidence of anyone who has said, or is saying, that it is possible for anyone to become free of the instinctual passions that are the root cause of human malice and sorrow. In the light of this failure you are reduced to clutching-at-straws propositions, which do nothing but highlight the lack of facts that support your case.

Clearly the writings of Carlos Casteneda point to the Indians of the Mexican peninsula devoting their entire existence to such goals. One is not likely to find such evidence scouring the internet.

Speaking of straw-clutching, Carlos Castaneda’s writings have long been exposed as being fiction masquerading as fact. All one needs to do is type ‘Carlos Castaneda’ into a good search engine and one can readily see that his fictional stories have nothing to do with actualism and everything to do with shamanism, spiritualism … and pop-psychology.

If I can just return to the topic of naiveté and the question you asked earlier –

‘So then give me a tip to rediscover naiveté if you would?’

At some seminal point in my early days of being interested in actualism I came to realize that the only way I could rekindle my naiveté was for me to be prepared to question all of what I had taken on board to be right, good and true. Eventually I came to see that this meant abandoning all of my previous conceptions about the nature of what it is to be free that I had imbibed from others. No doubt, whatever it is that is standing in the way of you rekindling your naiveté will gradually becoming equally clear to you.

To No 66: Of course the process would accelerate if you force yourself to become a blind fanatic. It’s like the above. If you disable your ability to question and criticise what you’re doing, you’ll have certainty ... but refusing to listen to your objections does not render them invalid.

I vaguely remember at one stage thinking such thoughts but what I found was that much of my thinking was plagued by the world-weary cynicism that I had unwittingly taken on board in my life. Once I managed to scrape sufficient of this cynicism away I was able to rekindle my naiveté such that I could unreservedly question the wisdoms, truths and psittacisms that caused me to have a cynical view of life in the first place. I do understand that most people equate naiveté with foolishness but I found that I had to be naïve in order to even consider that peace on earth was already always here and only ‘I’ stood in the way of it become apparent 24/7.

As for your comment about becoming ‘a blind fanatic’*) – have you ever paused to consider that allegedly ‘clear-sighted’ people see this paradisaical planet as a grim and awful place, that allegedly ‘questioning’ people passionately cling to their dearly held beliefs, that allegedly ‘reasonable’ people are of the view that you can’t change human nature, that allegedly ‘sane’ people pray to mythical Gods or Goddesses for peace on earth, that supposed ‘wise’ people continue to revere ancient fairy tales and to venerate archaic superstitions and that allegedly ‘intelligent’ people fervidly object to those who set their sights on becoming both happy and harmless.

When I took this on board, I realized that I was starting to think in a way that was fundamentally different to the rest of my fellow human beings, and I do mean fundamentally. This inexorably lead to me coming face-to-face with the realization that it is a deeply cynical viewpoint to think that we human beings will never ever be able to live together in peace and harmony – and the flip-side of this realization was the beginning of a hundred percent certainty that this is not only possible but that it is inevitable now that the way out of the human condition has been forged.

It is important to distinguish between scepticism and cynicism because it is impossible for someone who is cynical about, or detached from, life and the universe to crank up enough innate naiveté to be an actualist.

*

Although it took a while, I soon came to take Richard’s observation that the human condition is epitomized by malice and sorrow as a given – the global-wide evidence is overwhelming, whilst the evidence of the predominance of feelings of malice and sorrow on a personal level is somewhat disconcerting when initially acknowledged and unmistakeably observed in operation in oneself, and as one’s ‘self’. I also had a strong flash of realization when I first met Richard and he said ‘everybody’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – the realization that everybody, including me, had been trolling through the garbage bin of history’s tried-and-failed philosophies, beliefs and theories, dusting them off for recycling, denying their shortcomings and ignoring their failure to elicit anything remotely resembling peace on earth between human beings. This brief flash of realization was sufficient to embolden me to consider abandoning my life as-it-was and embarking on a path that no one else had trod but Richard.

And I had to look no further than the war ‘I’ continuously conducted with all of my fellow human beings. Ending the habit of pointing the finger at others and acknowledging one’s own feelings of malice and sorrow is an essential starting point in the process of actualism.

The next realization I spoke of requires an abandonment of real-world cynicism – and spiritual romanticism – for it requires an astounding naiveté to consider that ‘everybody’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – that there might be a third alternative that can actually bring an end to human malice and sorrow, in this body, and every body.

If one sees a life in the ‘real’ world as worthless – then it can get rather depressing – very quick.

If I may suggest, the alternative to becoming depressed is to make sure you do something worthwhile with your life.

Now, I don’t see you, Richard, and Vineeto as saying that a life lived in the ‘real’ world is without worth – yet it seems hard to reconcile a description of life in the ‘real’ world as ‘death-like’ with a description of life in the ‘real’ world as ‘valuable’ or ‘worthwhile.’ But, maybe I’m reading too much into the description of ‘death-like.’

If it’s possible to be both ‘reasonably happy’ and ‘death-like’ at the same time, then I suppose we can just call it a quirk of language and how our experience is expressed with language.

And yet you said at the start of this post –

‘Put into context, I have no objection to your description. It is rather quite a good description when understood as your experience.’

I don’t see your difficulties in reconciling living life in the ‘real’ world with the experience of being free of the human condition as a quirk of language at all, but rather that you are trying to reconcile the description in question from the standpoint of two distinct experiences. For someone who is reasonably happy with the experience of being a being in the ‘real’ world the description can be felt to be offensive, but for someone who remembers a PCE – the experience of being fully alive, sans identity, in the actual world – the description is a matter of fact statement.

Perhaps this will be of some use in understanding the nature of the quandary you seem to have arrived at, at this stage of your investigations. All sorts of doubts and hesitations arise whenever anyone is faced with chucking out the old and beginning something entirely new. Despite this resistance for things new, the universe itself has an inbuilt propensity for betterment that can be seen in action in the human species as a combination of daring, curiosity, naiveté, altruism and intelligence.

These qualities are what an actualist continually taps into on his or her path to becoming free of the well-and-truly-passed-its-use-by-date human condition.

I would have assumed that anyone on this list was here because they had an interest in the subject matter being discussed here – how to actualize a personal peace on earth and thereby offer oneself as proof that peace on earth is possible, in this lifetime, as a flesh and blood human being and not in some spurious afterlife. As a part of this discussion it is pertinent to undertake a clear-eyed, intelligent assessment of one’s own efforts to date and the efforts of billions of one’s fellow human beings. To look at the efforts to date and acknowledge their failings to bring anything remotely resembling peace on earth.

To undertake this investigation requires naiveté not cynicism, determination not fatalism, bloody-mindedness not defeatism, confidence not pessimism, a stubborn refusal to settle for second best not resignation, and a burning discontentment with the Human Condition of malice and sorrow not a self-centred complacency. If you are content with your life as it is, if your spiritual pursuits have bought you peace, happiness and freedom or if you are certain they will, then this discussion list is clearly not for you.

I remember once pricking up my ears at something Richard said. He said something like ‘Do you really believe that human beings will never find a way to live together in genuine peace and harmony – that there will never be an end to all the wars, rapes, murders, child abuse, domestic violence and corruption that human beings inflict upon each other?’ It sure made me understand how cynical the universal conviction is that there can never be a workable straightforward down-to-earth solution to ending human malice and sorrow.

Interesting... I hadn’t really about the insidiousness of cynicism (and I have it in yards), but it surely must colour everything. Thanks for (yet) another ‘opportunity’.

If I remember rightly, you have been upfront about cynicism on the list before and I appreciate anyone who freely admits to feelings such as these. I remember being quite shocked as to how deeply cynical all of the spiritual teachings were and being stunned at my gullibility in that I had not seen this whilst I was on the spiritual path. The realization helped to show me how my own feelings of self-righteous and moral superiority had blinded me to the dark and sinister underbelly of all spiritual teachings.

One thing about the spiritual path that did not sit well with me, apart from feeling increasingly isolated and dissociated from the world of people, things and events, was the fundamental cynicism that underpins all spiritual belief – that the human experience is one of essential suffering. Because of this spiritual cynicism about life on earth meeting Richard, hearing of his experiences and reading his words was quite literally a breath of fresh air.

By taking on board what he had to say, and being able to relate to what he was saying by my own experience in a PCE, I was very soon able set off on the path to actual freedom. In doing so, I was able to forgo my cynicism and reconnect with my naiveté, I was able to cease practicing dissociation and begin being fascinated with being here, and I was able to begin the enthralling business of investigating all of ‘my’ beliefs and passions that make ‘me’ an inseparable constituent of the human condition of malice and sorrow.

Cynicism is the pits. It’s so delicious to have abandoned cynicism, to get in touch with my naiveté and devote myself fully to the business of becoming free from malice and sorrow.

I do find it odd that I now write as a hobby given that it was never an interest, I was not a great reader of books and struggled with English at school. I always thought that those who wrote and taught were not necessarily those who did things well. I chose the doing things well path but it is delightful to mix the skills these days. I remember buying the computer and setting it up and wondering what I was doing and more particularly how and where to start. So I took a note pad out to the balcony with a cup of coffee and sat down .... ‘As I sit on the balcony of our small flat contemplating life, I am moved to start writing my story.’ ... and away it went.

It proved to be an amazing introspective process ... to see that all ‘I’ am is nothing more than the sum total of the beliefs, morals, ethics and psittacisms that I had been instilled with since birth. To see that all ‘I’ am is automaton from a social and genetic assembly line, both fettered and fated to be malicious and sorrowful, is such a blow to one’s pride. But naiveté and pure intent produces such an honesty that one finds oneself gladly ‘spilling the beans’, so to speak. To conduct a review of one’s history, one’s actions, thoughts and feelings in the light of being ensconced and trapped within the Human Condition is an extraordinary ‘inner’ journey that beats any other form of therapy hands down. One literally puts oneself under a microscope and amazing discoveries are there for the making – things one was avoiding, things one was ignorant of, things one dared not to look at, things no one had told you, things that were completely different from what you assumed and believed to be so. This is the very business of an actualist – it is only by making this ‘inner’ journey of discovery by oneself, for oneself, that one is able to become free from belief. You get to find out what you are as distinct from ‘who’ you think and feel yourself to be – the ‘who’ that others and blind nature have programmed you to be.

awareness — being cognizant or conscious (of); informed. Oxford Dictionary

In common usage awareness refers to ‘I’ or ‘me’ being aware. The psychological and psychic entity within the body usurps the body’s senses, giving an apparent validity to its existence, and experienced as though ‘I’ see through the eyes, ‘I’ hear with the ears, ‘I’ smell with the nose, ‘I’ touch, ‘I’ think and ‘I’ am aware. ‘I’ experience myself as an alien in the world for ‘I’ am seemingly trapped within the body, feel isolated and disassociated from the world, and often yearn for freedom or release. Thus ‘normal’ awareness is typified by feelings of separation and alienation, fear and suspicion, resentment and aggression. With increasing life experience, disillusionment and disappointment, ‘I’ become cynical, resigned or accepting of ‘my’ lot in life, as any remaining naiveté is replaced with cunning self-interest.

This cunning selfishness is most prevalent in the spiritual practice of developing a higher form of ‘awareness’. This practice creates a disassociated higher entity, commonly known as ‘the watcher’, who then watches what ‘I’ feel, what ‘I’ think, what ‘I’ am aware of. This illusionary awareness of one’s ‘self’, if practiced assiduously can, on rare occasions, lead to a full-blown delusion or ASC whereby this watcher or Higher Self can imagine or ‘realize’ itself to be Divine and Immortal. Even if this Ultimate State is not reached, the practice and pretence of developing a new identity – the higher Self as opposed to the normal self – leads one further away from the possibility of developing a genuine awareness, bare of any ‘self’ whatsoever. AF Glossary

In the early months on the path to Actual Freedom I was intensely involved in what I was feeling and thinking – ‘a psychic search-and-destroy mission’ was how I termed it. This introspection was not selective as to the good and bad feelings as is the spiritual practice but was concerned with all emotion-backed thoughts and all passions. I was determined to eliminate all that was in the road and stopping me being happy and harmless, and pure intent is vital in this stage of the process. This process fairly rapidly bought on a state of Virtual Freedom – being virtually happy and virtually harmless.

What was then necessary was to abandon control, and abandon any notions I had of a ‘me’ being aware and simply let awareness happen by itself. This awareness is not ‘me’ being aware for this only serves to keep ‘me’ in existence. This is not an outer intense ‘on-guard’ awareness for this wariness only serves to keep the instinctual ‘me’ in existence as a fearful guarding entity. Naiveté is vital in this stage of the process, but beware of being gullible for the world is still as-it-is and people are still as-they-are – it is only me who is changing. It still necessitates keeping my wits about me and making a few practical adjustments now and again, but the emotions have all but disappeared from what would have been tumultuous events not so long ago.

Thus it is that more and more I can look with soft eyes at a friendly world, let my guard down, relax my defences, give up being in control and I, as this flesh and blood body, can be here in this actual world where I have always been.

Just a note to reassure myself that I can still write. I have been busy re-inventing myself, yet again – this time as a CAD architect and not a pen and paper architect. I have been learning a Computer Aided Drafting program for the past fortnight and it’s an amazing process. What was a familiar hands-on craft for me, now becomes a mouse-clicking computer operation. In the first learning stage, what would take me ten minutes to draw by drawing board took me ten hours by computer. After 2 weeks the ratio is down from 1 to 60 to 1 to 10 so I am well pleased. In a few months I can see myself being productive time-wise and I will be a cyber age architect rather than an industrial age architect.

Initially, I had some resistance to changing – at age 51 who wants to go back to kindergarten again, and I could well have struggled through in old-style until the pension kicked in. But I figured I had the computer and what the heck. It is so easy to miss the opportunity to move and change. It is an amazing and thorough change because none of my drawing manual skills are applicable, CAD is a totally different process. When I was considering buying a program I talked to an architect friend who said he went through 12 months of hell learning and obviously was still suffering from the experience. For me, the fascination of doing the same thing totally differently – reinventing my profession – was the prevailing experience. What can I do and how does it work?

I was reminded as I undertook this change how difficult it is for many people to change.

Some people are tempted to some form of change in their lives, some rebel against their upbringing, some swap religious beliefs, some swap partners, some move countries, some change jobs, etc. These forced changes are usually knee-jerk, emotion-driven reactions to particular circumstances, are painful transitions, and are very rarely fundamentally life changing. Much of the old patterns and habits are retained with the new partner, job, country or religious belief. The essential set-in-concrete personality they have formed by puberty remains intact and unchanged, the only difference being that any residual naiveté is replaced by a deep cynicism at having to cope with change or conform to changing societal restrictions. No wonder the option of escaping even further into an inner world of denial and imagination is so attractive to these people.

One of the ideals I refused to forsake to cynicism was that of peace on earth. Another was the ideal of being able to live with a woman in utter peace and harmony. I also refused to exchange my deep-seated ideal and yearning for a genuine freedom and autonomy for the utter selfishness of becoming a God-man or the crippling servitude of bowing down to a God or God-man. Actualism is about turning sensible ideals into practice in the market place, not abandoning them to cynicism and selfish pursuits. The simplest way of seeing this is to see idealism as naiveté – if you can abandon ‘real’ world cynicism and spiritual world gullibility and crank up your naiveté it will stand you in good stead in the process of actualism.

In a similar manner, I did not suppress my tender passions but rather utilized them to turn my ideals into practice – compassion for others when stripped of sorrow and pity revealed a genuine caring and concern, desire when stripped of avarice and greed revealed an altruistic urge to achieve the very best possible, and the base passion of fear, when stripped of debilitating doubt, revealed a thrill of adventure that served to spur me on.

Actualism is not about suppressing feelings – actualism is initially about eliminating the debilitating excesses of malice and sorrow, such that the felicitous feelings can come to the surface. This will then enable you to dig deeper into the very core of both your social and instinctual identity with safety and confidence – while still maintaining the naiveté and intent to always put one foot in front of the other on the path to Actual Freedom.

As you will come to realize, if you already haven’t, there are no Gurus or disciples, teachers or teachings, dogmas or mantras, Sanghas or ashrams in actualism. This list is not a mutual-admiration society, a cosy club of conformists, a forum for disgruntled spiritualists.

This mailing list operates under the unabashedly naive banner of ending human malice and sorrow – to bring to an end all the wars, rapes, murders, domestic violence, child abuse, torture, corruption, selfishness, anguish, despair, depression and suicide that epitomize the human condition.

There is no other website that so devastatingly exposes the human condition for what it is – a horrendous and senseless instinctual ‘self’-centred battle for the survival. There is no other mailing list as challenging as this, for what is being discussed is how to become actually free from the human condition – deliberately and with forethought setting in motion a process that can lead to the extinction of one’s social and instinctual identity – both ego and soul.

Of course you don’t have to go all the way, for, as you have already indicated, even a little bit of awareness, common sense and down-to-earthiness can bring many benefits in normal life. Your interest and your tempo is entirely up to you in actualism. If you want to take it on 100%, or just dabble a bit, is up to you and if you want to slow down or even stop at any stage, you can.

There is no need to beat yourself up for being a hypocrite because everybody is passionate about ‘their’ possessions, be it land, house, objects, kith or kin. This passion is more than a belief, it is in fact instinctual as can be readily seen in the behaviour of other animals.

Most societies have put in place a set of morals, ethics and laws that specifically deal with the issue of possessions so as to suppress and prevent the worst excesses of fighting and feuding over possessions, such as prevailed in the supposed good old days of humanity. Generally this carrot and stick approach works reasonably well, but locking one’s doors and windows is still a prudent action in all societies.

Yet however careful one is, things can still be stolen, lost or damaged which can cause inconvenience or even hardship, but to then suffer emotionally on top of this is but to compound the situation. As such, it is useful to become aware of any feelings associated with your possessions, as they occur, because it is feelings and passions such as these that prevent you from being happy and prevent you from being harmless.

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Speaking personally, I never rendered the feeling of being a hypocrite neutral, for in order to do so I would then have to be insincere. In my spiritual years, what I did was puff up my feelings of superior righteousness whereby others where the bad guys, others were the problem and so on and these feelings then masked and shielded my hypocrisy to a large extent. Two facts served to shatter my veneer however. One was the failure of yet another relationship and my acknowledgement that I was equally responsible for its failure and the other was an outburst of anger one day that demolished my self-image as a being a peaceful man.

Both these incidents nagged me, for it made it obvious that despite my beliefs and fine ideals, I was being insincere and hypocritical, i.e. I was sprouting one thing and doing another. When I came across actualism I was presented with the challenge of doing something practical about my insincerity and hypocrisy and the challenge was to devote my life to becoming actually happy and actually harmless. Thus it is that sincerity – the ending of hypocrisy – is both the starting point of actualism, the driving force on the path and the end of the process of actualism.

I strongly recommend cranking up sincerity, not neutralizing it.

What I am saying is that the human search for peace on earth is based on dreams and ideals that have been run and re-run by billions of people for millennia and they don’t work. These dreams and ideals are based on ancient spiritual concepts and beliefs – fairy tales in fact – that has it that the physical world is underpinned by a spirit-ual world, a world populated by good spirits and evil spirits. Thus the human battle for survival is believed to be a noble battle between Good and Evil – a wretched nonsense that has held and still holds mankind enthralled.

To flagellate yourself for not living up to the morals, ideals and beliefs that are part and parcel of this puerile scenario makes no sense if you want to become free of the madness of the human condition. What I did was use my feeling of being a hypocrite trapped within a hypocritical-ridden humanity to re-spark my sincerity to actually do something practical about peace on earth.

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Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust