‘Being free of the belief in an after-life, I am now free to actually be here, fully acknowledging the fact that before the sperm hit the egg I wasn’t here, and when this body dies, I die, since I am this body. What else could I be? A walk-in, like Rajneesh? Having no belief in a past or future life enabled me to tackle the issue of my behaviour, my actions, my feelings and emotions, my experiences and, of course, my happiness, right now. I have no second chances at living, this is it, so I have to be the best I can be now. This understanding was crucial in order to be able to fully embrace the responsibility I had to free myself of the psychological and psychic entity that was shackling my enjoyment of life. It didn’t allow me any room for denial, bargaining or accepting a second-rate life. I simply could no longer postpone or avoid. It made the question of ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ so vitally intense to me and meant that the process of becoming free was guaranteed of success. What I understood of the method, briefly, was to make being happy your immediate goal – after all, this is your only moment of being alive that you are able to actually experience. Being happy yesterday is useless and imagining or hoping for it in the future is avoiding the issue. ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ was the question to be continuously asked. If you are not happy now, then you have something to look at. The particular feeling or emotion that is causing you not to feel good now, has a source that needs looking at. What particular belief, conditioning or instinct is causing your unhappiness in this moment? Root around layer by layer until it is exposed. As a useful test to apply, once having discovered the cause or the issue, is to question: ‘Is it silly or sensible?’ Does it make sense, is it supported by facts, or is it a belief; does it work? Whatever is preventing my happiness now deserves my total attention and thorough investigation – simply believing the opinions, beliefs and values of other similarly inflicted people is to be gullible in the extreme. It is my life I am living and it is happening now. I then became vitally interested in my happiness for the first time. I was looking within for the problem, not outside. I was also looking within for the solution, not outside. And I was looking to eliminate it, to be free of whatever was causing my unhappiness, such that it would never come back. Finished, gone.

It certainly put postponement in its place and as for avoidance...! And nobody else does it for me – I do it for myself!’ Peter’s Journal, God

‘Simultaneously I proceeded to investigate with Richard all things religious and spiritual. What became apparent was that he was no spiritual Master who’s ‘Energy’ created blissful feelings. There were no discourses, no spiritual practices, no meditation – just a frank and open discussion ranging over all facets of the Human Condition. What these investigations started to reveal was confrontational to the very core of ‘who’ I thought and felt I was, because I was one of those human beings suffering from the Human Condition. Every time we would talk about something that I took as ‘right’ or ‘true’ or ‘real’, I was challenged to look at it afresh. Was this just something I had heard or read and assumed to be a truth – or was it that I simply believed or wished it to be true? Was it silly or sensible? What were the facts of the situation? What was my actual experience about this?

My mind would sometimes go into a sort of gridlock, unable and unwilling to withstand what it took as an assault. Rightly so, because the very ‘I’ who I thought and felt I was, was being found out as made up of nothing more than the beliefs of others, society’s conditioning and a set of primitive animal instincts! It was both exciting and terrifying at the same time as I found myself questioning all that I held to be true.

I was conducting an investigation into my very own psyche – how extraordinary! Peter’s Journal, God

There was also another, no less important, motive. I came from some 17 years on the spiritual path where one was either free as in Enlightened, an awakened wannabe as in a teacher, or Enlightened as in an indisputable God-man. Once I recognized that the path to Actual Freedom had nothing to do with the traditional spiritual freedom, it became clear that a new form of communication was possible that had nothing to do with the demeaning humbleness that passes for communication in the Master-disciple system. We now have the opportunity to move beyond the traditional bowing down before some Guru or devotedly parroting some God-man’s wisdom whereby we can now ask sensible questions from an expert, an authority on the subject of both spiritual freedom and Actual Freedom. There is also a chance for those who are interested in freedom, peace and happiness to share their successes and failures, to ask questions and get answers, to make up their own mind free of emotional pressures, to move at their own pace ... or to bail out if it is not for them. For this type of discussion to eventuate I realized I had to be both an initiator and a contributor for it to be of benefit to me and others.

Again a win-win situation.

Further, there is the obviousness of having the courage to stick one’s head above the parapet, so to speak. What struck me was the fact that Richard has been daring enough to not only to be the first to become free of the Human Condition but to then go public with his finding. For this he has had to run the gauntlet of cyber abuse and ridicule, but if it were not for that fact that he did it, neither you nor I would be as happy or harmless as we are today and this forum would not exist. If it were not for the fact that Vineeto and I stuck our heads above the parapet by writing to the Sannyas mailing list, some who are reading these words would not be doing so. What others make of these words is purely their business but that we can talk of how to become free of malice and sorrow is an astounding development that is only possible via the World Wide Web. The benefit of the Net is that abuse from others is limited to swear words in capital letters or cyber-execution from mailing lists but one is tested nevertheless as to whether one takes offence – for if there is an emotional response it is a sure sign that there is a ‘me’ who takes offence and then ‘I’ have something to look at. This communicating with others also has the advantage of letting others know that there is now available a third alternative to either remaining normal or becoming spiritual.

Again a win-win situation.

Another point that comes to mind is that becoming free of the Human Condition is not a dispassionate affair – it is not about stripping one’s ‘self’ of emotions or making sense of the Human Condition such that one becomes a stripped-down clever cool ‘self’. The motivation to get beyond this stage has to be a ‘self’-less concern and consideration for one’s fellow human beings, such as is experienced in a pure consciousness experience. The utter futility and sheer pointlessness of human beings being instinctually driven to battle it out with each other in a fear-driven struggle for survival on this verdant and bountiful planet becomes startlingly evident ... and one is inexorably drawn to do something about the situation. You realize in a pure consciousness experience that the only thing possible to do is to ‘self’-immolate – to rid this flesh and blood body of the entity that is, by its very nature, malicious and sorrowful, that ‘I’ can only be a contributor to violence and suffering on the planet. You realize that this act is the only sensible and practical contribution you can make to peace on earth.

*

I am not suggesting that everyone needs to write a journal or needs to write on a mailing list, but some form of ‘coming out of the closet’ is essential, for that is, in essence, what becoming free of the Human Condition involves. The sensible and easy way to do this is to follow someone who has already done it and also to share one’s experiences, knowledge, successes and failures with others who are actively doing it. Richard did it by himself, as everyone else has to, but we now have the benefit of being able to have the support of others and to give support to others ... altruism in action, if you like.

Also any failure (or difficulty) investigating can become a progressively more difficult stumbling block, as it can become a matter for supporting the idea that ‘I am not worthy of achieving this’.

The ‘I’m not worthy’ idea bugged me on and off for about 6 months or so, and it eventually collapsed by itself like a limp balloon. It seems to have some of its substance in the spiritual idea that only the good and noble are ‘chosen’ – that there is a ‘Someone’ or ‘Something’ that decides who is worthy or not worthy, who is blessed or who is damned. The other issue is the constant drumming we have from our peers such as ‘who do you think you are’, ‘how come you think you know better than everyone else’, etc. It is called the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ in this country. The cute thing is that it is okay nowadays in some circles for someone to call themselves God-on-earth or God-realized and yet when an actualist dares to stick his or her head above the parapet, those same people heap scorn or can’t get beyond their spiritual conditioning to see the down-to-earth-ness of what is now on offer.

The ‘why me’ eventually wore itself out with a more pragmatic ‘why not?’ Was I going to continue being malicious and sorrowful when I could be considerate, sensible and magnanimous, when I could see that the excuse I was running was about ‘me’ objecting to me, this flesh and blood body, being here.

Given pure intent, these objections eventually wear themselves out for they have no substance, no credence ... and no staying power.

In my life I simply exchange a bit of time, working for someone else, for some tokens called money, which I then exchange to rent a comfortable flat, for food, clothes, and the surprising little else I actually need to enjoy life. My hunting and harvesting is done with a trolley in the local air-conditioned supermarket and takes me thirty minutes a week. Humans, at least where I live, have organized an amazingly effective administrative, legal and commercial system that, combined with my sensible actions, serves to provide a safe and wonderfully comfortable life for me.

Every pleasure I need in life is located in this flat or within walking distance.

So much pleasure that Vineeto and I sometimes have to run a little schedule to decide which pleasure next – sex, food, play on the computer, watch some TV, a walk...? One has to be wary of ‘pleasure stress’ when this actual world of delight and physical pleasure is revealed. Hedonism really – and the word has such a bad press in the real world of suffering! This is not to deny that I could be confronted with danger or indeed ill health at some time, but then I will just respond appropriately at the time. It is truly amazing that I now actually experience the planet as a safe and delightful place in which to live, while all around live in fear and aggression.’ Peter’s Journal, Evolution

So No 7, back to your question –

‘have you experimented by acting against your social norms (Acting against our religious / social conditionings and taboos to investigate the rush of emotions that follows such experiment, for example)? If so, did such action break through the psychological power of the norm and did it give you more encouragement to investigate them more deeply?’

What I find now is that silly and sensible replaces good and bad, right and wrong and as such, it is very sensible to obey the laws of the land – the freedom and change is fundamental and internal, not conditional on the external. The aim is freedom from malice and sorrow, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Put into practice, this means that if you are not happy now because of some belief, moral or ethical value you hold, if you are upset because of the way someone else is, or if you are miffed or angry about some situation you can do nothing about, then you have something to look at in your own psyche. If there is some sensible action to be taken to change one’s circumstances then one can make it in a sensible, harmless and appropriate manner.

A bit of digging in and changing oneself rather than looking outside and blaming others or the circumstances is required.

Many people pay lip service to the idea that the only person you can change is yourself, but when, and if, the penny drops, your life will never be the same again. For me this realization proved the starting point to really beginning to change. I won’t post it here but you will find my story of this realization in the Living Together chapter of my journal and Vineeto has written about it in A Bit of Vineeto.

Becoming free of ‘religious / social conditioning and taboos’ is a process that brings to the surface much fear for one is literally dismantling a large part of one’s identity and stepping out of humanity, so it is sensible to be cautious as to what you say to others and what you do during this process. Much passion can be uncovered and much turmoil can result as the firm and familiar ground beneath one’s feet seems to shake and eventually disappears. Each success brings a tangible, palpable and heady freedom.

Our social identity was instilled in us in childhood in order to curb and control the emerging instinctual savage passions arising from the animal fear-aggression reaction genetically encoded in our ancient brain structure. With the knowledge gained from the pure consciousness experience and the relentless application of common sense – the silly and sensible judgement – you capable of reducing the effects of the instinctual passions in your life such that you are able to become happy and harmless 99% of the time. Unless you are willing to strip away and reduce this outer secondary layer of identity you will never be able to investigate and experience both the savage and tender instinctual passions that form the deeper primary instinctual self.

I’m not one for books of Revelation either, nor doom and gloom, but any child these days knows that the physical, material world in which we are living is collapsing because of mankind’s lack of consideration for the environment. Are you sure that you yourself are not imagining that Paul so definitely divides the human condition from the devastating state nature is now in? Sure, he gives our beliefs way too much credit, but could radical actualism go the same route and go into denial about the very real effects man’s imagining brain is capable of.

Children don’t ‘know’ this from some innate sense of wisdom or foresight born of innocence – they have it drilled and drummed into them by teachers, media, parents etc. In the last few decades environmental studies have formed an essential part of all school curricula for all ages. Not only is it often taught as a separate subject in many cases, environmental issues dominate economics, science, politics, engineering, social sciences, entertainment, media, etc. Every child who receives a modern Western education is taught from a very early age that the material, physical world in which they live is either collapsing or is in imminent danger of collapsing and that human beings are at fault. My school days were in the late 50’s and early 60’s and environmental theory hadn’t been invented then. The major fear at that time was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear devastation, but doom and gloom predictions weren’t taught as part of the school curriculum as is case with the teachings of environmental doom and gloom.

What children know is what children are taught. Thus what we think we know or take for granted is, almost without exception, what we have been taught by our parents, teachers and peers. We take this information to be true, as in factual, whereas an extraordinary amount of it is theory, fashion, belief, concept, current idea, old wives tales, psittacisms, prejudiced view, etc. One only needs to consider what the school curriculum would have been like a century ago and consider how much of it would be relevant today, how much our world view has changed and yet how much of the past we desperately cling to. However, what we have been taught as truisms forms the very substance of our social identity – ‘who’ we think we are. One’s social identity is the conglomerate of all the beliefs, morals, ethics, values, principles and psittacisms that each of us has been programmed with since birth.

Unless this programming in the brain is questioned and sorted into silly and sensible and old redundant neural connections severed and new ones formed, one remains a victim of one’s social identity – whereas an actualists avowed aim is freedom from being this identity that has been imposed upon this flesh and blood body. Therefore it is vital that all one’s beliefs, morals, ethics, principles and psittacisms be questioned and reviewed.

This is the practical business of an actualist, this is the very down-to-earth pragmatic work to be done. It is an uncomfortable, tedious, seemingly-pedantic, fear-provoking process that people are very reluctant to undertake for you are quite literally dismantling a very large part of your ‘self’. Most of this information is programmed into us at the early years but quite a lot of what we hold dearest is what we have adopted later in life as we ‘moved with the times’. Environmental belief and Eastern religious belief were two that I adopted later in my life, and as such, I found them relatively easier to question for they were a bit like the layers of clothing I had swapped during my adult life as fashions and times changed.

So, the first thing to be aware of is that you are doing the very business of dismantling your social identity by questioning and challenging your dearly held beliefs. The second thing is that they don’t magically disappear by themselves. It requires stubborn effort to dig in and question and you will find much resistance, wariness, hesitancy and objection in yourself to devoting the necessary time and effort required. The third thing is that it is something you have to do yourself to the point that the ‘penny drops’ for you, otherwise you are back with simply swapping beliefs or adopting another belief – a useless enterprise that will do nothing to free you from the human condition.

Actualism is not a philosophy – it is a down-to-earth practical method that can enable you to become free from the human condition.

But three facts clearly indicate a new approach is necessary –

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

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

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

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

Choicelessness and Being Present

‘Go with the feelings, the intuition, not with the mind. That is choicelessness. All that I have said about choicelessness applies to presence as well. Presence is being in this moment with acceptance, including all the facts and disconnecting from them.’ Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

Put so clearly, choicelessness is a choice made by one’s feelings, a decision solely based on the emotions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Deciding anything this way is guaranteed to produce an utterly selfish and self-centred result or decision, not the best decision, the most appropriate and most sensible. In deciding ‘not with the mind’, the spiritual claim of choicelessness can be best described as thoughtless and senseless, selfish decision making.

As for ‘being present’, it is clear that the Eastern religious philosophy is to ‘choicelessly’ accept and then disconnect from the facts – facts such as the physical body, one’s emotions and thoughts, one’s physical surroundings and other people, the fact of one’s mortality, etc. If being ‘present in this moment’ is so good then why would one want to disconnect from the facts that are evident in this moment. Why would there not be delight in thinking, delight in being conscious and alive as a flesh and blood human being, delight in this paradisiacal planet floating in this wondrous universe?

If this is not the case, in this moment, then why would one not want to do everything possible to evince delight, happiness and harmlessness? Why would one want to continue to practice denial, acceptance and ‘disconnecting’ as the East have done for millennia? The results of these religious practices are readily evident in the present cultures of the East, where poverty, corruption, duplicity, hypocrisy, repression, violence, arrogance and greed abound.

Inner Dialogue

‘Most people are not aware that they are thinking all the time. Day and night, even when they are mediating and sleeping. I call this perpetual chatter of the mind the ‘inner dialogue’. <Snip> It is possible to set yourself free by recognizing, in each moment, the whole process of the mind, acknowledging it and sharing what is appropriate. Disclosing your inner dialogue reveals your truth in each moment, most importantly to yourself. <Snip> You do not need to go seeking anything. If you would start to become aware of your inner dialogue and share it, you would transform yourself and you would transform each other. You would cut straight through the blanket in which you bury yourself from life – your own internal chatter – and you would start being here with yourself and with each other. That is when life really begins.’ Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

Well, this gets really silly. I had to muse a bit to consider where he is coming from in this bit of wisdom. Then I remembered back to my spiritual days when ‘sharing’ was all the fashion and I remembered Mr. Lowe’s training as a therapist. My experience of this approach is that what is ‘shared’ with others is most often one’s misery, suffering, frustration and anger – all done in a ‘loving way’, of course. The theory being that by getting it out, expressing it, emoting it, that it somehow evokes a change. This form of therapy has now been largely discredited or abandoned in mainstream society as offering only temporary relief and little or no long term change. It is still in vogue in the spiritual world where it acts as a way of cranking up a temporary bit of feel-good at having ‘got it all out’, or ‘off my chest’. Many people I know have been carrying on this way for decades and still rely on an emotional fix from the next proponent of feel-good to arrive in town to make ‘being present’, on earth, ‘in’ the body, temporarily tolerable again.

The other revealing aspect is that Mr. Lowe, along with all spiritual people, makes absolutely no distinction between thinking and feeling. Most of this ‘internal chatter’ or ‘inner dialogue’ is the direct result of the modern brain attempting to process, suppress, control, interpret or cope with the flow of chemical signalling from the primitive brain. Feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts – a thought directly related to the emotions and passions of the primitive brain. These feelings have at their roots either fear, aggression, nurture or desire – the instinctual passions. This spiritual bungling of feelings and thoughts together as ‘the chattering of the mind’ is to deny any chance of being able to separate and distinguish between what is sensible thought and what is ‘self’-centred impassioned feeling and thought.

This is why the spiritually-trained have so much difficulty with the simple question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ It takes effort and perseverance to identify, name, trace, investigate and understand what one is feeling – what is preventing perfection in this, one’s only moment of being alive. They constantly lapse back into denial, acceptance and ‘disconnecting’, as they have been trained to do. They righteously seek to maintain their spiritual identity as ‘the watcher’ of this ‘continual chatter of the mind’ rather than roll up their sleeves and get stuck into becoming free from the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

I know this is the case with me. I have had to constantly not settle for second best, no matter how good things seem to be. My bench mark is always the perfection evident in the PCE but to continue to ‘raise the bar’ has always meant changing. Being finished with something, stopping doing something, breaking some habit, losing friends, changing some behaviour, taking some risk and experiencing another bit of ‘me’ falling away.

There is a dare in being here, out from Humanity, self-less and free of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

Actualism is a challenge and a commitment to irrevocable change – 180 degrees opposite to the ancient formula of D+A=nc (Denial + Acceptance = no change).

We have assumed there is something wrong with us and we have spent our lives attempting to put it right. In fact there is nothing wrong; all we need to do is become aware, in each moment, of the behavioural patterns with which we have covered our essential self. Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

So ‘in fact there is nothing wrong’ also includes all the wars, rapes, murders, domestic violence, corruption, tortures, despair, suicides, etc. If nothing is wrong then the Human Condition of malice and sorrow is okay with Paul. Nothing needs to change on the planet, for it is all the ‘outer world’ and, when full delusion sets in, it is all regarded as an illusion anyway. D+A = nc!

The use of awareness in the spiritual world is a total abuse of the word. To call practicing and becoming ‘disconnected’ from the physical world ‘awareness’ is an utter effrontery to intelligence. This is not awareness – this is to ignore, to deny, to encourage ‘not knowing’, to cut off, to turn away – the very antithesis of awareness.

Aware – Conscious, sensible, not ignorant, having knowledge, well-informed, responsive to conditions etc., informed about current developments. Oxford Dictionary.

If you hear a spiritually trained or influenced person (which is everyone) use the term awareness, what they are talking of is a selective, narrow, ‘self’-centred, ‘self’-serving viewpoint deliberately practiced in order to ignore and turn away from the Human Condition.

To practice ‘spiritual awareness’ is to guarantee a permanent exile from the actual world.

An actualist is careful and accurate in the use and meaning of words. For the spiritualist the misuse and disregard of words and avoiding sensible communication is necessary in order to get away with what they do. An actualist does not play this game for one would then only be fooling oneself – a sad state of affairs indeed.

The wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom is a search for what is genuine, sensible, down-to-earth, authentic, unadulterated, factual, verifiable and actual and, as such, involves the systematic observation, investigation and elimination of all that is false.

Which is why self-immolation is the inevitable result.

We are told that we operate at 5 percent of our potential, and that small percentage is the ‘I’. Science maintains we experience only one billionth of reality and this is squeezed through that ‘I’, through the restriction of saying ‘this is good, that is bad; this is benefit, this is harm’. This is how we block the gate to the state that no one has ever been able to describe – the Tao, the Hidden Harmony, the Kingdom of God. Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

The mind boggles at the thought of the scientist with his reality-experiencing meter calibrated to one billion units. ‘Excuse me madam, could I just check your reality-experiencing level?’ Mr. Rajneesh was equally inept and devious in his clipping on a bit of theoretical science to his religious teachings in order to pretend that there was some factual basis to what he was teaching.

This is just plain silly nonsense but the next statement points directly to the harm that believing these fairy tales actually causes in perpetuating human malice and sorrow. By saying we operate ‘through the restriction of saying ‘this is good, that is bad; this is benefit, this is harm’ he makes a leap that both denies and negates sensible thought and, more significantly, any consideration of the effects that one’s actions have on one’s fellow human beings.

Judging a situation, event or action as good or bad, or right or wrong, is to make a judgement based on one’s social programming and one’s instinctual ‘self’-ish passions – but then to deny any sensible judgement based on what is beneficial and what is harmful to others is taking self-interest and self-centredness to the extreme. Those who follow religious beliefs, be they Eastern or Western, ultimately make no sensible judgement as to whether their beliefs, emotions and actions are harmful to others – and the religious world is full of such self-righteous behaviour. This self-righteous disregard for other human beings is the very reason that human history is a litany of religious wars, crusades, tortures, persecutions, perversions, repression, recriminations, prejudices, retributions, pogroms, etc!

For me, being involved in the Rajneesh religion at the time when the Rajneeshee-Christian conflict was coming to a head in Oregon in 1985 was ample proof that spiritual belief over-rides any consideration one may have about harming others. Like thousands of other Rajneeshees at the time I was willing to kill or die for my beliefs – not that I have found any who are willing to acknowledge it.

A spiritual person’s malice is harnessed in the fight for ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’ – or ‘my’ God vs. ‘your’ God – and fervent belief blinds one to the facts of what one is doing.

An actualist is vitally interested in sensibly judging and actively investigating what harm his or her thoughts, emotions and actions are causing for one’s fellow human beings in order to become actually harmless.

The necessary first stage in this process is to stop the utterly selfish, self-centred and self-indulgent spiritual practice of denial and acceptance.

I am suggesting to you that any misery you are experiencing, without you realizing it, is being created by you. You do not need to create any more pain and you might never be unhappy again. That is truly possible. I am not saying it is likely to happen, but I am not ruling out the possibility. If I were to say that it is not possible, I would be adding to the human tendency to be closed to something unexpected that might, in fact, be possible. I know this could be true, but I am not suggesting you believe me; just stay open and allow for this possibility. Your life could change now – totally, utterly and completely. Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

The spiritual cliché of staying open. Stay open to the possibility. Never decide anything. Don’t have an opinion about anything – except what you believe, of course, and then one needs to have faith, trust and true belief , in which case, one is anything but open.

There are few who are more closed to sensible thought and factual evidence than the spiritual believers. It is a necessity that they remained closed for if they didn’t they would be open enough be to scrutinize their passionately held belief ... and then the fecal matter might hit the whirling blades – to pinch a Richard-expression.

Take a moment to tune to yourself now. Forget what you have been reading and be with you. What are you feeling? What is going on with you right now? Let yourself be easy with this, because you do not have to change. <Snip> I am suggesting to you that you can be different right now. It is possible for you to shed your misery and allow your bliss. It is entirely up to you. Anything is possible. Anything. Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

A bit of guided imagination at the end of the chapter. Shed your bad feelings and pump up the good ones and ‘you do not have to change’.

No wonder spiritual belief is so, so appealing and so, so popular.

Well, this got a bit long, No 5, but the fearful spiritual belief in doom and gloom is so endemic it needs a few facts presented to put the case for sensible thought and honest, straightforward assessment.

This PCE has confirmed for me that Actual Freedom as the only game to play in town. As I watch the sacrifices of countless people who fight for ‘freedom’ of their particular group, suffer themselves for the ‘betterment’ of others, who blindly sacrifice all in a vain attempt at ‘betterment’ for Humanity, this sacrifice is so much more sensible and valuable. And it seems to require no special heroics, no super-human qualities. It is but the inevitable and welcome consequence of pure intent and a refusal to settle for second best. Let’s face it, the mountains have all been climbed, the continents discovered, technological discoveries, while still amazing, are a crowded field and awash with meta-physics. The human search for the beginning of time or the edge of the universe are as futile as the search for God. Wherever I looked the field was crowded – the chance of making a contribution, dwindling. The next challenge facing the human species is to rid ourselves of malice and sorrow – and a few days ago I glimpsed the ‘mountain top’ of the challenge. Of course, as I come off the peak experience I also realize the mountain top is here under my very nose, on earth at this moment – so I use the words ‘mountain top’ with a touch of poetic licence. So, after the PCE, it is obvious that my destiny lies beyond psychological and psychic self-immolation, that this event will be a definitive and decisive moment, that it is willingly and eagerly anticipated ... and that Enlightenment will be avoided. So, far from being an ‘unfair’ or ‘perverse’ exercise to cause a self-immolation or psychic death, it is the most exciting, amazing, wondrous, extraordinary journey possible for a human to make – a journey into one’s own psyche ... to the very end.

The other facet to the path to Actual Freedom – to the 99% stage – is that realizations are clearly seen for what they are, sudden and dramatic flashes or glimpses of a belief exposed as merely fictitious and not factual. These realization have a feeling ‘high’ associated with it, as a sense of liberation and startling clarity is affectively interpreted and experienced. While extremely useful and ‘par for the course’, as beliefs are exposed and eliminated, it is what one does with the realization, what action or change is evinced, that is important and significant, not the realization itself, per se. One needs to be aware of realization addiction, to put it bluntly, as one can spend an inordinate amount of time and effort looking or waiting for them and as such ‘not being here’. They are but curiosities and will eventually subside – to have had their day, exactly as will the rest of impassioned feelings and irrational imagination, if peace is one’s aim. A personal peace in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are, that is.

I wrote a bit in my journal about realizations that may be useful –

‘This process of identifying various aspects of the human condition within me became a full-time occupation. Whenever I was not experiencing myself at the optimum level possible at the time, I had something, some aspect of the Human Condition, to look at. This constant looking within myself – my psyche – would then expose that particular belief or instinct as silly, not sensible, and it would eventually disappear. Often the change was sudden and dramatic with a corresponding thrill of freedom, while other issues brought a slow, sluggish release. Often I found myself impatient at an apparent lack of progress, just to realize that this was exactly the issue to look at – perhaps the desire for excitement and achievement, or good old boredom. It was extraordinary that the next thing would come along, and the right circumstances and events would occur, confronting and aiding me. Sometimes, seeing through some part of ‘me’ as a mere belief or instinctual pattern would come as a flash of realization, sometimes as a slow painful dawning, which I would fight tooth and nail, reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone throw out. But gradually I could notice the psychological and psychic entity becoming thinner, actually weakening its hold over me. It then became apparent to me that I was indeed fixing myself up!’ Peter’s Journal, Intelligence

So Alan, hope this has some relevance to your current experiences and may be of some use.

It is a most fascinating business, this pioneering trail-blazing. The cute thing is we get to do it with absolutely no physical hardship – on the contrary, hedonism and physical delight abounds and abounds....

Says he as the smell of bacon and eggs and fresh brewed coffee calls him away .

What I increasingly discovered was that the brain of this flesh and blood body has an inherent ability to be aware of itself, an ability of apperception. When I ask ‘What am I thinking?’ or ‘What am I feeling?’ or ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ it is this apperceptive awareness that can provide the answer. It was enormously difficult and bewildering sometimes at the start but as fact replaced belief, clarity replaced confusion and pure intent replaced ‘open-ness’ and listlessness, and ‘what’ I am – not ‘who’ I am – gradually emerged and became apparent. At first, the whole exercise can feel like a weird ‘self trying to dismantle self’’ exercise, but soon one realizes that it is fact dismantling belief, apperceptive awareness dismantling self that is happening.

So for me, in hindsight, it was apperceptive awareness – the ability of the brain to be aware of itself – that does the job, dismantles and demolishes both the normal and spiritual, both the psychological and psychic entity. When one has a realization about a belief and ‘sees’ the facts there is an actualisation that can occur which is not of ‘my’ doing. In the face of the blinding and glaringly obvious fact, sensible down-to-earth action can ensue. In the spiritual realm, one merely ‘realises’ and takes on board a new belief such as ‘I am really God after-all!’ or ‘I am Immortal – thank God!’ – and non-sensical action inevitably occurs.

Many people who have read a bit of the Actual Freedom writings think that the dismantling of spiritual beliefs is some sort of side issue, or a sort of ‘put down’ as is common in the spiritual world between various teachers and Gurus. This is to miss the essential iconoclastic nature of Actual Freedom. To live in the spiritual world ie. to have spiritual beliefs is to be twice removed from the actual world. The spiritual world is an imaginary world that the spirits dwell in. The psychic entity or soul within the flesh and blood body is a ‘spirit’ ie. non-actual and metaphysical. The self as soul ‘dwells’ in the spiritual world while the self as ego ‘dwells’ in the normal world.

To be an actual flesh and blood human being is to be without ego or soul – then one can find a personal peace in the actual world, free of the Human Condition.

If you want to be happy and harmless then nobody does it but you.

It seems to me that this inquiry is done by the self without regard for the self almost like jumping off a cliff. It is amazing how after having gathered enough information about the woes of self, the self then in its own pathetic way attempts to dismantle itself. I think though this is the point where attention plays an important role. I am finding this curiosity-lead attention to be most liberating.

We are attempting to develop a consistent ‘story’ and terminology in describing the path to Actual Freedom not as a philosophy or another ‘ism’, but to attempt to clearly communicate our experiences to each other – to swap stories and experiences on the basis of a commonly understood language. As such the ‘curiosity-lead attention’ may well be what I was describing above as the combination of pure intent and apperceptive awareness. If your curiosity includes an investigation of the myths and beliefs of Ancient Wisdom – the foundation of the spiritual world – then a sensible, sensate experiencing will become more and more apparent. One finds oneself engaged in the thrilling business of actively dismantling one’s own psychological and psychic entity – doing what every one warns you not to do, or says is impossible to do.

But should you want to be pragmatic, realistic, down-to-earth, astute, sensible, reasonable, informed and discerning instead of being spiritual then there is another alternative ... I see that you are interested in the idea of peace and being happy and harmless yet you are not at all interested in Actual Freedom, the practical way to achieve both. I’ll try to explain again what we are on about, although it appears that I am ‘flogging a dead horse, as they say –

Maybe another way of looking at it is that all we humans are engaged in a big play called ‘being human beings on earth’. It’s our first time in the play, so we look to the others who are already playing to learn the rules and regulations.

Now when we enter the game we find the whole scenario of the play is already written and the name of the game is ‘It’s a dog eat dog world, life’s a bitch and then you die’. Given that it is a tough and miserable game, our main interest and constant obsession is self-preservation, survival, come what may. As such our underlying traits are that we are fearful and suspicious of all the other characters in the play and that we will fight for our rights and our life, come what may. We also find that we have to be members of a tribe to survive and, as such, we are taught the remainder of our script – the particular character role that we play within our tribe. We are further told that it is impossible to leave the protection of the tribe or you will die, and unless you constantly keep fighting for your survival you will die – no letting up, or letting your guard down. In a game like this ... no wonder we feel lost, lonely frightened and very, very cunning.

But what if you found some players who told you – you can play the game without having to be a tribe member, and without the constant fear of survival? What if you could re-write your particular script in the play? And it is not a dream, it is now possible for those who want to, to play the game of being a human being with a new script. All you have to do is to leave your old character behind. Or as Richard puts it ‘step out of the real world into the actual world and leave your ‘self’ behind’. It is a brand new script and most will object and still play the game of malice and sorrow, but soon the other game will become more and more played. Seeing it as an obviously more sensible game people will eventually join in with hardly a thought as to the old ‘survival’ script that they were wired to play. The game of survival is, at core, a grim game as we know it – 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone, not to mention all the murders, rapes, ethnic cleansing, sectarian violence, tortures, domestic violence and suicides. The new play eventually would see humans playing in a world without wars, without domestic violence, rape and torture. With men and women living together in peace, harmony and equity. With sexual pleasure freed of guilt, shame, aggression and perversion. With no religious or territorial wars fought over right or might. With no police, no legal battles, no need for justice or retribution. Where everyone treats each other as fellow human beings and wishes well of each other. Where equanimity, co-operation, consensus and helpfulness are readily apparent in all interactions. Where the current money and effort used to fight wars and keep the ‘peace’ are used to bring the benefits, comforts and pleasures now possible for the few to all humans on the planet. Where care and consideration replace greed and avarice, ending pollution forever...

We actualists are simply saying – stop believing what the other players tell you is your fated script and stop believing that the rules of the game can never be changed. That it is possible for individual players to delete the old, ancient and decrepit, survival program in its entirety and to now run on the sensible and sensate, stripped-down version, free of malice and sorrow. One can now become free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow, if you want to make the effort.

I gave up waiting for Godot, the Second Coming, the New Dawn, the New Millennium, the Apocalypse, the End, or the New Bhagwan ... who I see is the latest Guru on the block.

I know it is inconceivable to you that there is now a way to get out of all this mess – as it was to me at the start. But I was curious enough to find out for myself, and it seemed eminently sensible to investigate whether the things I believed to be ‘true’ were facts or not. Did they work and had they ever worked? What was actually being said, what was being promised? Had the promise been kept?

Pride is evidenced by the psychological and psychic entity inanely claiming kudos and acclaim for something the body and mind did very well by itself.

I would see it clearly in action in my architectural work. I would sit down to design a building, armed with the necessary drawing equipment, my previous experience and training and the client’s requirements and a few hours later – Bingo, a drawing. Six months later a building stood on a bit of land and I would marvel at the process that produced it. The human brain, with its extraordinary ability to think, process information, reflect, remember and conceptualize delights in such activity just as the body delights in walking, the eyes in seeing, the fingers in touching. As such, when praise came for my work ‘I’ could never claim the praise, for it was not of ‘my’ doing – it was as if the drawing drew itself, so magical is the process. Pride and its partner humility are irrelevant feelings in this case – I was then able to make a clear and sensible assessment of the building, usually good but also aware of any areas for improvement.

The other wonderful thing when pride and humility no longer run one’s life is that one is free of being dependant on the opinion of others, usually fickle, most often incorrect, unreliable, biased, malicious, ingratiating, etc. In the end I became my own judge – the judgement and assessment could be much more honest and reliable that way.

I have been watching a bit of afternoon TV lately and have been particularly fascinated by the nature programs. In my childhood the word ‘environment’ was not even known. 40 years ago human beings on the planet simply used and often abused the land, water and air. Resources needed for human survival were seen as endless, and it was only with world-wide communications that more people are aware of the fact that we are very much a planet bound species – we are earthlings. This global view allowed the majority of humans to think about pollution and overpopulation. We are moving from a position of being hunters and gatherers on the planet into one of sensible custodianship. I use the word custodianship in the sense that humans are the predominant and intelligent species. This whole set-up is, after all, for our enjoyment, our delight as free humans. The tough business of early human beings – the very real struggle to survival involved fighting for territory, struggling for food, struggling against disease and sickness, etc. Despite the romantic ideal that ‘things were better in the old days’ or ‘in Ancient Times’ the facts point to millennia of warfare, plagues and famines – a constant battle to survive.

Now the ‘tough battle’ for human beings is to accept the challenge of being happy and harmless – to put an end to the battle to survive and rid ourselves of malice and sorrow. It is now possible for us to send people to Mars on a space ship but the major difficulty is that the voyage would be 18 months long and it’s impossible for the crew to live together without fighting for so long a time. The main problem is the human inability to relate to each other, let alone live together, in peace and harmony. The elimination of the very source of malice and sorrow is the next and vital stage in human evolution. This is the very cutting edge – an actual freedom from the Human Condition – the ending of a species.

The military are also engaged in peace keeping operations, which do not amount to ‘war’. If bombing the shit out of someone and firing dozens of cruise missiles (costing in excess of a million dollars each) is not ‘war’, I’d like to know what is.

I used to think that there was a solution for Humanity’s ills, that if only ... I would watch TV or participate in the typical male conversations about what was right or wrong with the world, what needed to be done. Now it is apparent that Humanity is terminally ill – finished, kaput, stuffed, going around in circles, revolution after revolution, cycle after cycle, old wound after old wound festering to the surface again. It’s time to abandon ship – to have the courage to stand on one’s own two feet as it were while being sensible enough to keep one’s hands in one’s pockets and one’s ‘opinions’ to oneself. Except if you find someone who is interested in freedom, and then it is hard to stop raving ...

I always thought what a marvellous time it was to be right in the middle of the formation of a religion when in my spiritual days and now I get to see the beginnings (or continuation) of a war on TV Such fascinating times to be alive – to see the cultural identities we have been imbibed with, to see the religious myths, to see the Human Condition as a totality.

Actual Freedom has never been possible before as it was physically impossible to obtain an overview of various social identities and tribal groupings, as well as an overview of the effects of instinctual-driven passions. There has been an explosion of knowledge and information that makes believing in Ancient Wisdom an insult to intelligence. In the past there was always a maybe, always a possibility that someone had a solution somewhere and it was just a matter of finding it. Nowadays you can just log-on or tune-in, and all of Humanity’s wisdom is available for perusal and scrutiny. For the first time in history one has sufficient information to sort out for oneself what is silly and sensible without having to believe what others say.

All that is needed is a willingness to find out for oneself what it is to be a human being.

It’s about as simple as falling off a log.

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