What I find of value is that ‘happy and harmless’ is, if not an objective standpoint, at least a sensible measure to my feelings and psychic states and thus experience of life. PCE’s are out of the equation as I presume they provide for an objective standpoint and guiding light. I would say that the well-meaning intent is the resultant of not remembering PCE’s, but having/remembering a PCE would connect ‘me’ with ‘pure intent’ and thus with the benevolence of this material universe? Is ‘pure intent’ the human body’s equivalent of the ‘matter’ benevolence and active force for the best form or is it simply the reaction of ‘me’ to experiencing perfection?

Personally, I started with an utterly pragmatic, very down-to-earth desire to live with another person in utter peace and harmony, which obviously meant that I needed to learn how to be act-ually considerate of a fellow human being (and not just feel that I was). Sincerely considering another’s needs and wants as much as my own then helped me question and change my ‘self’-centred myopic view on reality, which in turn made me more happy, less fearful and more at ease with myself and others. This success, in turn, increased my intent to not only live in peace with one other person but with everyone I meet and interact with, i.e. it increased my intent to becoming actually harmless. Harmless is not just feeling oneself to be harmless but ensuring that I neither have any (hidden, as in usually unconscious) intent to harm nor am I so blindly ‘self’-centred as to ignore or dismiss the other, rip them off or inconvenience them by my ‘self’-centred passions.

Then, when I had my first major PCE, it became blindingly obvious that it is not just aspects of my personality but ‘me’ as a feeling being who stands in the way of the already existing peace and this experiential knowledge turned my well-meaning intent into pure intent because I now knew that ‘I’ had to disappear in my entirety in order to be able to experience the peace on earth that I longed for.

The fact that my ‘search’ has ended and dealings with people have improved is clearly attributable to actualism.

There have been a lot of misunderstandings about the phrase ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive.’ I’ve tried to focus on ‘what’ I am experiencing – a sort of passive awareness, ‘what’ I am sensing – passive awareness – ‘what’ I am feeling – passive awareness – and other variations on the ‘what’ theme. It is only with the recent distinction between ‘what’ and ‘how’ that I see the question is specifically designed to be a simple test of the quality of experience in whatever form. ‘How’ is the important part in that it puts attention on the quality of experience – the emotions and feelings underlying thoughts so that one understands them experientially with attentiveness, not intellectually.

Ah, how simply you said it!

‘How’, not ‘what’ is indeed the clue to the difference between attentiveness with pure intent and the passive awareness of Eastern tradition. It had never occurred to me that it is this word that signifies the vital difference, but now that you said it is perfectly obvious – ‘how’ inquires into the quality of the experience and then the pure intent to improve the quality of this moment to be both more happy and more harmless indicates what needs to be done. Whereas ‘what’ simply takes stock of the content of one’s experience and by doing so one can either focus on sensate experiencing, thereby avoiding undesirable affective experiencing – trying to become an un-feeling ‘self’ – or one can focus on desirable affective experiencing, thereby regarding what one sensately experiences as being secondary or even illusionary – trying to become a non-thinking, dissociated ‘self’.

I have enjoyed you latest posts to the list and I particularly liked your precise list of questions regarding the infinity of the universe. It was the urgent quest to know that served to bring me definitive answers about the universe and what it is to be a human being and, going by your posts in the last two days, you certainly have discovered some definite answers.

Ah, wonderfully put – ‘the second reluctant foot’. Although the period of establishing a prima facie case is crucial in order to be able to understand what actualism is about, I found that I only started having success with the actualism method after I had jumped in with both feet, … or, to extend your metaphor, you cannot walk forwards if you have one foot on each side of a barbed wire fence.

Ah, in the light of ‘a tendency to pounce on any beliefs or opinions whatsoever’ I understand your query that ‘the word ‘belief’ is deficient’. However, I think that as long as you stick to pouncing on your own ‘educated guesses’ there is no way you can astray because you will find out soon enough if your ‘educated guesses’ qualify as being beliefs and as such need further examination. It is the passionate intent to get to the bottom of all of your beliefs that is crucial for uncovering all the borrowed knowledge and all of the ideas, principles and convictions that you, like everyone else, have inadvertently taken on board.

(2) I don’t want to fall for the shortcut that goes half-way and makes it all but impossible to go the rest of the way, if you know what I mean.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘the shortcut that goes half-way’ – are you talking about an imaginary freedom such as a permanent ASC (which is not ‘half-way’ but rather the wrong direction) or are you talking about a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow as being the half-way that ‘makes it all but impossible to go the rest of the way’ … or do you mean something else altogether?

Whatever the case, I can only recommend to not let the fear of not being able to go all the way prevent you from beginning the journey. In my experience the courage and the knowledge as to how to proceed only became available when I began walking the walk. Each step of this exploration into my psyche is a step into unknown territory – the only guide you have are your own PCEs and the reports from practicing actualists about their particular experiences on the path.

My current plan is to just do it now, and to try to make sure that I’m doing it right. Do you think it’s better to have a ‘road map’, or to just stick with now?

Isn’t the ‘road map’ the description of how to do it ‘right’? Or are you talking about a different ‘road map’?

The only thing that I really needed to get ‘right’ was my intent because, as Peter explained in his last post to No 32, it’s the intent that determines the direction in which way to proceed – there is the intent to either explore consciousness per se in order to pursue out-of-the-normal experiences or there is the intent to become actually happy and actually harmless in order to live in peace and harmony with one’s fellow human beings as-they-are in the world-as-it-is.

Once you are sure of your intent, sincerity and integrity will guarantee that you avoid the various pitfalls on the way.

This is precisely why pure intent is so crucial if one wants to become actually free from the human condition.

I am sure that this is true, and I’m also pretty sure that I don’t have the purest of intents. Not yet anyway. I have a few too many doubts to confront, but I’m certainly keen to keep exploring. (I’ll raise these doubts in detail later, but for now I’ll just mention that they are not doubts about Richard’s sincerity, they are doubts about whether the final step in AF is actually possible for all people, or whether it requires a biological configuration unique to Richard, and maybe a handful of others).

When I think about what strengthened my intent over the last years, I find it curious that they were all things that had to do with how I wanted to live my life and had little to do how other people chose to live theirs. At about age 45 I had determined my main goal for the rest of my life, which was that I wanted to live with a man in peace and harmony, and I soon discovered that this intent for peace and harmony could not stop at our front gate if I was at all sincere.

The other persistent passion throughout my life was my search for truth, as I called it then, a truth that is true for everyone, not only for those who choose to believe one version of truth or another, and this search ended when I had a pure consciousness experience. I knew right then and there that the only ‘truth’ that is true for everyone, regardless of their gender, race or culture, is the actuality that is already right here, experienced by the senses, available for anyone who cares to make the effort to remove the obstacles that prevent one from sensately experiencing it.

The question as to whether an actual freedom from the human condition ‘is actually possible for all people’ can only be answered on an individual basis because to achieve this freedom requires that an individual makes it the most important thing in his or her own life. Thus far I have met or have corresponded with very few people who are interested in doing so.

If, however, you want empirical proof that an actual freedom does not require ‘a biological configuration unique to Richard’ then you will have to wait until a second, or third, person becomes actually free from the human condition. Personally, I didn’t want to waste my time waiting for that, I’ll rather be part of the proof.

The other day you wrote to No 37 making an assumption about me that I want to clarify –

I am certainly not attempting an ‘emulation of that programming’. Actual Freedom is not about emulating a programming – it is about becoming free from one’s social programming and from the invidious effects of blind nature’s instinctual programming. With the actualism method I remove my default setting, the normal and spiritual programming of the human condition – I do not replace it with another programming. When the identity is removed – as experienced in a pure consciousness experience – the actual becomes apparent only because there is no programming interfering with experiencing what is already here.

Yes, you said it very well. As long as ‘you’ ‘have a vested interest’ in preventing ‘the fundamental experience of the actual’, all you can do is ‘rationalize’ actualism – to mean what it doesn’t mean ... because what actualism really means is the end of ‘me’.

When I discovered actualism and satisfied myself that it was genuine article, there came a point when I had to make a clear-cut decision. Either I would live the rest of my life settling for second best … or I would make a commitment, knowing well that this commitment would be the end of ‘me’. I don’t know why, but second best was never an option.

Once I had made this commitment something quite delicious happened – I discovered ‘I’ had something worthwhile to do – ‘I’ had a purpose, a goal worth dying for – and this commitment alone made ‘me’ immensely happy. Committing myself to actual freedom ended my search and began my process of discovery, I had found the effective method to achieve the freedom I had always longed for – the only thing left to do was to do it.

*

Good on ya. It is amazing how much can be achieved by a good dose of naiveté combined with the determination to change radically and irrevocably.

Yes, that’s it. In actualism, the first thing that takes a bashing is one’s pride because the pursuit of becoming happy and harmless means to set off in the opposite direction to what society regards as being intelligent and wise. From the real-world point of view skepticism, cynicism, criticism and denigration are considered intelligent behaviour, while from the spiritual point of view dissociation, detachment and not-knowing are deemed the peak of wisdom.

Consequently the pursuit of becoming unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless, i.e. giving up battling it out in either the real world or the spiritual world, is seen as a sign of foolishness … and the fear to appear foolish is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to beginning the journey to an actual innocence.

As you say, naiveté is ‘elemental’ to the actualism process – without naiveté you cannot even consider that human beings can possibly live in peace and harmony, let alone that one can free oneself from one’s genetically encoded instinctual programming. To allow naiveté to replace skepticism and cynicism is a big step towards leaving the safe haven of resignation and never-ending uncertainty and dropping out of the day-to-day combat in the grim battle of survival.

Naiveté has two purposes in actualism – firstly, moving on from the initial analytical process of making a prima facie case as to the sensibility of actualism to beginning the experiential hands-on exploration of one’s psyche – the process that leads to irrevocable change. And equally importantly – awakening one’s dormant naiveté is vital to be able to remember, or induce, a pure consciousness experience.

As Richard’s sum it up –

In a nutshell it is where one is walking through the world in a state of wide-eyed wonder ... simply marvelling at it all. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that one usually keeps hidden away for fear of seeming foolish ... it is like being a child again, but with adult sensibilities, which means that one can separate out the distinction between being naïve and being gullible. Richard, List AF, No 4, 4.4.2002

You said above ‘And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared.’ I am not sure about this because stopping what causes fear in a given situation is not going to eliminate the fear from reoccurring. It will stop the current fear in the current situation but it won’t end fear (‘me’). This sounds more like an avoidance of fear (‘me’).

We’ve been at this point before. If I may remind you of the discussion in question –

The point is that there is substantial risk. It looks like confronting fear itself is the way to overcome fear and not to avoid situations that cause fear.

It is, of course, entirely your choice and your business how you are assessing the odds – I was simply reporting the general figures of stock market gambling which are evaluated at 75% or more losers compared to 25% or less winners.

As for ‘confronting fear’ – people have tried for centuries to tackle their fear of physical danger by confronting it <snip> What I am saying is that the idea of confronting one’s fears is nothing new, it is part and parcel of the human condition and has not resulted in any change towards more benevolence and happiness in human behaviour. People who confront their fear are in no way less malicious or less sorrowful despite the sometimes-enormous effort and time they invest trying to get rid of their fear. In your specific case you seem to want to tackle fear with more risk-taking, i.e. with greater desire, whereas in my experience it is the desire to ‘hit a homerun’ as you say further down, that generates the fear of loss in the first place.

The way I tackled fear was firstly to be sensible in practical situations thereby reducing the risk of actual danger or loss, which served to stop fuelling the fires of passion. Then I set about enquiring into the reasons that lay behind my various fears.  Vineeto, List AF, No 16, 13.12.2001

You cannot eliminate fearful feelings just because it seems like a good idea. In order to free yourself from the genetically encoded survival program you will need an altruistic goal – an aim in life that gives you the non-‘self’-oriented perspective you need in order to dare to radically change. Without an altruistic goal you will go round in circles, trying this method and that teaching, this technique and that medicine without ever evincing any change at the core of your ‘being’.

As an actualist I want to become unconditionally happy and harmless, knowing full well that achieving this goal will be the end of ‘me’. Because I have a clear direction I can apply the actualism method with success – whenever I am not happy, as in feeling fearful, worried, anxious or sad, I immediately explore what prevents me from being happy and do whatever it takes to return to feeling happy as soon as possible. Similarly, whenever I am not harmless, as in feeling annoyed, angry, resentful or unkind, I immediately explore what prevents me from being harmless and do whatever it takes to return to being harmless as soon as possible.

*

Given that even enlightened people do not manage to eliminate anger and anguish – they merely disguise and designate it as being ‘Divine Anger’ and ‘Divine Sorrow’ – I do wonder what plans you have and what method you want to use in order to accomplish your aim of having ‘the cake and eat it too’?

You say

‘having my cake and eat it too is only a saying describing what I have been doing’

and you also say that

‘I have been using an old method that I used in the 70’s which has been working’.

Putting the two statements together, it reads that your ‘old method’ from the 70’s is ‘having my cake and eat it too’.

Yet despite the fact that you say your ‘old method’ ‘has been working’ you started this thread with –

‘I have been wondering what’s missing for me?’

It seems that ‘your old method’ is not working after all if something is still missing for you. .

Given that you consider the passion for peace on earth to be ‘religious fervour’ I can only say that ‘what’s missing’ is pure intent.

I am not too sure if other people who report success with actualism method are in the same state because for me this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life one could live. This is very well within human condition.

From the way you describe how you are currently experiencing life you seem to be somewhat more happy, less bored, less dull than you were last year. Therefore when you now say that ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular or fundamentally different than normal life’ you seem to have not taken into account how you previously experienced normal life. Taking your words at face value, you seem to be belittling whatever success you may have had, seem stuck at being reasonably happy and reasonably harmless and are now saying ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ as though the actualism method itself is somehow lacking.

The success you have with the actualism method is directly related to the strength of your intent. Therefore whether or not your progress is ‘too slow’ cannot be measured according to the successes of other people practicing the actualism method but can only be measured according to the degree of happiness and harmlessness you want for yourself, relative to how much effort you are willing to apply to the task.

*

However, if you want to further investigate why ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ it might be appropriate to look at the post that you have written on the same day to No 3, in which you describe how and when you apply the method of actualism –

And I end up focussing on awareness only while going to sleep or when I have nothing else to do. No 4 to No 3, 13.6.2002

This is clearly not the actualism method as Richard has explained it to you – Richard to No 4, 14.1.1999 and 19.2.1999

Has it not occurred to you that the reason you had such limited success with actualism – ‘this doesn’t look to be anything spectacular’ – is that you are not using the actualism method as it has been described to you?

I wonder why you are wondering about the degree of success you are having using the actualism method when you say –

‘I am reasonably happy when I am content and peaceful. In other words I have no serious complain with life, I have no need to change anything and I do not carry any acrimonious feeling towards others’.

If you are happy being ‘reasonably happy’ and if, when you are feeling ‘reasonably happy’, you feel you ‘have no need to change anything’, then actualism is clearly not your cup of tea.

However, if you are inspired by ‘people describing their PCEs’ and you would like to live a ‘self’-less PCE 24 hours a day, everyday, then you will need to change. You will need to make being harmless and happy priority number one in your life – the very top of your laundry list.

Being ‘reasonably happy’ can generally be achieved either by repressing one’s unwanted feelings, obeying the social-religious morals and ethics, or by detaching from one’s unwanted feelings, following the spiritual practice of dissociation. If you are interested in experiencing the dazzling splendour and peerless pristine excellence of the actual world then you would have to investigate why you would settle for feeling ‘reasonably happy’ – reasonably as in ‘moderately, modestly, cheaply, within one’s means, tolerably, passably, acceptable, average’. Oxford Thesaurus

In order to lift the bar to feeling excellent you would have to ask yourself the question – why do I not feel perfect, which feelings interfere with my feeling perfect and reduce my experience of life to merely feeling ‘reasonable happy’, which, as you said yourself, isn’t ‘anything spectacular’?

Before I go into the nitty-gritty of degrees of being harmless and happy, the unresolved question is whether being harmless and happy is priority numero uno in your life. If it is, then settling for second best will be out of the question for you. If it is, then you will automatically lift your game from being ‘reasonably happy’ to feeling happy to feeling perfect to sensual delighting in being here and you will know for yourself what feeling perfect means without needing to compare it with anyone else’s feeling perfect. Perfect means the best and needs no comparison.

*

Cultivating the attentiveness required for the actualism method to be successful is not akin to some sort of meditation that you do ‘while going to sleep or when [you] have nothing else to do’. If you want to change your life from feeling ‘reasonably happy’ to feeling good to feeling happy to feeling perfect, then attentiveness needs to be applied each moment again, regardless of what it is you are doing at this moment and regardless of where you are at this moment.

To use the example you related to No 3, when ‘preparing for a presentation’ you focus your attentiveness on how you are experiencing this moment of being alive whilst doing the research and activities for the presentation and in doing so you become aware of what causes you to have sad, anxious or irritated feelings during this activity. When cooking dinner, you ask yourself to how you are experiencing this moment cooking dinner, when driving a car you pay exclusive attention as to how you are experiencing this moment while diving along the road, and so on.

Actualism, being non-spiritual, non-philosophical and down-to-earth, is like any other pursuit in life. For example, if your aim is to win the Olympic gold medal in the 5000m marathon, then you will spend your days training and exercising until you are confident of reaching your goal – you will stream-line your whole life, putting all other desires aside, to make sure you reach your goal and you won’t let off until you have perfected your skills. But if you only want to do a little bit of jogging to see if you like it or not, then you won’t need to practice, you won’t need to change your life, you won’t need to perfect your running style.

Of course, attentiveness is acquired like any other skill in life – you begin with the easy and graduate to the more difficult. First you begin being attentive as to how you experience this moment of being alive when brushing your teeth, getting dressed, having breakfast, waiting for the bus, driving a car, standing in the elevator, cooking a meal, watching television, and so on. When your attentiveness increases through practice, you advance to the more involved and more emotionally charged occupations of your day. Again, it all depends on your intent – no interest, no effort, no result.

No 47’s recent response to No 44 can give you some food for thought regarding this question. Vis –

Until it finally ‘clicked’ that I was not really applying actualism, to be happy and harmless, but rather applying what I felt, or wanted, actualism to be (what it seemed to be) and this had nothing to do with actualism.

I wanted a quick relief, like with my previous getaway beliefs, and I did not want to work for it nor did I want to be subjective about it … because it hurts. I know for a fact now that becoming free of the human condition does not occur by just reading what others have to say, then wishing for it to be true, and then feeding off this faith; or thinking that some energy will eventuate because of the knowledge I accumulate. It really has been, and sometimes still is, very hard work, and very personal … but it is paying off. No 47 to No 44, 4.6.2003

This PCE confirmed that my holding onto a cozy relationship was nevertheless my identity in action. Although my relationship with Peter is founded on felicitous feelings only and I live with him in perfect peace and harmony, I clearly could see that ‘I’ as an identity was preventing something far, far superior to any psychic or psychological connection – an exquisitely delightful direct intimacy with a fellow human being. A couple of days later, when I checked what was left of ‘my’ relationship to Peter, I realized that not only had I lost any sense of my former affective connectedness but also my feelings of competition and comparison had disappeared. I had always regarded Peter as the better and older actualist and the better and more accurate writer and now I found such emotionally-charged comparisons had completely vanished. I also discovered that this entailed that I no longer feel obliged to respectfully wait until he becomes free before I dare the final jump. Now that I don’t relegate myself to a slot in an imaginary queue, nobody can prevent me from becoming free from the human condition.

The comparison between a pure consciousness experience and my every day living experience certainly spurs me on. Seeing and understanding, over and over, the ‘‘downside’ to affective feelings’, as you say, does indeed weaken the magnetism of being ‘me’. However, I think that you need to have the firm intent to live in genuine peace, whatever the price, in order to be motivated to question and explore your identity and find out ‘what is getting in the way of living in peace and harmony’ . Then the potent combination of sincerity, naiveté and wonder will tip the balance towards making ‘the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent’, as Richard said to No 37.

Seeing similarities between your social/instinctual identity and others certainly gives you confidence as to the accuracy and veracity of your investigations, but what spurred me on was success in becoming more happy and, even more importantly, more harmless. Experiencing that the actualism process demonstrably works over a substantial period of time and in all down-to-earth conditions then incrementally turns confidence into surety.

There are the spontaneous PCEs that everyone experiences at some point in their lives, which I explain as a spontaneous temporary glitch in the instinctual programming that allows the perception to be purely sensate and thinking to be free from any affective influences. These PCEs seem to be more frequent in childhood when the identity is not yet set in concrete, so to speak.

However, when a person has a good dose of sincerity, sufficient enough to re-awaken his or her naiveté, then he or she may develop an intent to live the purity, peace and wonder they have experienced in such rare moments of ‘self’-lessness as often as possible – i.e. it takes naiveté to devote one’s life to becoming happy and harmless. Only then, the memory of a spontaneously occurring PCE spurs me on to demolish the elaborate and firmly consolidated edifice of my ‘self’ in order to facilitate pure consciousness experiences happening again and again.

You could compare it to living in a securely air-tightened bunker when suddenly a crack appears in the wall and brings in some pure sweet fresh air … and suddenly the whole bunker disappears along with ‘me’. The bunker eventually reassembles itself and the crack is automatically repaired – a process due to the ‘self’-sustaining nature of the social-instinctual programming. It is then up to ‘me’, the one who thinks and feels to be in that bunker, to either wait for another accidental crack – akin to waiting for Godot – or to actively do something so as to experience the magical actual world again. In other words, when the PCE fades, ‘I’ then have to get on with the moment-to-moment business at hand – to demolish the very structure that is ‘me’.

A weakened and less ‘self’-centred structure of ‘me’ certainly provides more opportunities for ‘cracks’, i.e. PCEs, but all of ‘me’ needs to be extinguished in order that those ‘cracks’ don’t automatically ‘self’-repair and yet again shut out the splendour and purity of the actual world.

You recently wrote to No 33 about what you described as ‘a mini-PCE’, saying that it was ‘accompanied by a real sensation of unfettered happiness’. The expression, and my own experiences of ‘unfettered happiness’ triggered some trains of thought.

I’ve been mulling over the first part of your post, the reference to a PCE as seeing from ‘a bird’s eye view’. It was oddly coincidental as it arrived the same day as I had awoken to what I think was a mini-PCE. I had spent a good part of the day before actively recollecting PCE experiences of my earlier years so I must have greased the skids a bit (side note – this is why the vets hammer on remembering a previous PCE so strongly). It was similar to experiences I had had when younger, and there was a definite perception of being ‘outside’ or ‘not myself’, a ‘bird’s eye view’. It was also accompanied by a real sensation of unfettered happiness, something which I realize has been all too lacking of late. Alas, it was not long-lived but residuals did linger through the day. I think that my ‘outside’ interpretation is a natural first conclusion, when historically the ‘identity’ is considered the ‘real’, hence anything else is foreign, but if I have the nerve to suggest that the ‘identity’ is actually on the ‘outside’ (so to speak) of my actual self, then a PCE exposes the real nature of ‘identity’ as interloper. Same shoes, different feet.

I think it’s time to cut back on the intellectualization and spend some more time on the experiential half of the process...

I found that I am experiencing ‘unfettered happiness’ only when I am both free from fear and free from guilt, the two dominant emotions remaining after I had investigated, and greatly reduced, anger, sorrow, love and hope. I found that both fear and guilt are inextricably linked with the core of my identity, with being a ‘being’. At core ‘I’ am guilty being a ‘being’ and ‘I’ know it. ‘I’ am feeling guilty that ‘I’ am being here, and I am aware of it most of the time.

Richard’s latest conversation with No 37 threw some more light on the issue of the deep-seated feeling of guilt that remains even when the social-religious conscience consisting of the morals and ethics of society has been dismantled –

Respondent: I’m not out murdering, raping, abusing people and that sort of thing – as many people are not. Is one ‘guilty’ just by having a ‘human nature’?

Richard: Not by having a human nature ... by being human nature (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’): ‘I’ am guilty by virtue of ‘my’ very presence: it is ‘me’ as a psychological/psychic ‘being’ (at root an instinctual ‘being’) who is guilty of being harmful just by existing ... but it is not ‘my’ fault as ‘I’ am not to blame for ‘my’ existence (if anything it is blind nature which is at fault or to blame).

In the normal human world one is considered guilty where one does nothing about one’s human nature. Traditionally people try to avoid this ‘doing nothing’ guilt by living in accord with culturally-determined morals and ethics and values and principles and mores and so on. However, when push comes to shove, this thin veneer of civilised life can vanish in an instant and the instinctual survival passions can come surging out in full force …<snip>

The solution to all this is to be found in the actual world: in a pure consciousness experience (PCE), where ‘I’ as ‘my’ feelings am temporarily absent, it will be experienced that one is innocent for the very first time ... in a PCE there is not the slightest trace of guilt whatsoever to be found. ‘Tis a remarkably easy way to live. Richard, List AF, No 37 (27), 17.8.2002

I always wondered what produces pure intent because it greatly puzzled me that some people seem to have more of it than others. I discovered that my own pure intent to become free from the human condition consists of two main ingredients – one is the memory of a pure consciousness experience and the other is the awareness and acknowledgement of my inherent guilt for being a ‘being’ and the subsequent determination to do whatever is needed to become guilt-less – innocent.

Most people I met and talked to in my life were more interested in getting rid of fear which is, next to guilt, the other major side-effect of being a ‘being’. However, I found the pursuit of fearlessness an extremely ‘self’-ish and ‘self’-centred affair, given that feeling fearless only benefits and enhances one’s ‘self’ and is not concerned with bringing an end to human malice and sorrow.

In contrast, the pursuit of innocence – the determination to eliminate the root cause of guilt – is intrinsically altruistic in that I recognize that being a ‘being’ inevitably contributes to the misery and mayhem of human beings. And it is this altruistic, ‘self’-less, component of one’s intent that will ensure the success of becoming free from ‘self’.

So you see, your description of ‘unfettered happiness’ triggered an understanding as to why my spiritual pursuit of happiness through fearlessness was bound to lead only to dissociation and self-aggrandizement. However, when I stopped sticking my head in the sand, when I started to take a clear-eyed look at what’s going on in the world and finally dared to acknowledge and become aware of my guilt inherent to being a ‘being’ did I begin to fuel the pure intent that is so essential for the process of becoming free from the human condition.

I feel that struggle is not about freedom at all, it is just the nature of ‘me’ to struggle. Of course, action of some sort is required to change the status quo. This is where the ongoing question comes in. Now what is beyond questioning? Or to put it another way, what is being withheld from the light of awareness?

That ‘struggle is not about freedom at all’ is a feeling, or, to be more precise, an idea. The nature of ‘me’ is lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning – and, as such, resists the effort to be eliminated.

But it is not just your idea. It is the core of Eastern teaching. ‘Just become aware that you are already ‘It’, and that’s all you need to do’. It is part of identifying with the ‘watcher’, the so-called aware identity, and ‘all will be well’. That method might make you enlightened but it will never get you an inch closer to Actual Freedom.

To become free, one has to want freedom with all one’s might and passion. One has to put all one’s eggs in one basket. And in order to eliminate emotions one will first have to experience them, feel them. One has to play the drama on stage (experience one’s emotions with neither expressing nor repressing them) in order to know all the actors involved. One has to ‘get down and get dirty’.

The Work is definitely not spiritual – it’s a method for self investigation.

Has it ever occurred to you that the method is only as good as the goal one wants to achieve with using the method? <snip> In short, if the aim is not ‘self’-immolation it is inevitably ‘self’-aggrandizement and ‘Self’-empowerment.

Ah, yes. Goals are good for achieving desired outcomes like building empires and manipulating the masses but in some matters, including self investigation, I prefer to let the investigation and curiosity direct the outcome. Preconceptions are so boring.

The goals in actualism have nothing to do with ‘building empires and manipulating the masses’ – I wonder if you read anything at all on the AF website as your cynical fantasy is running wild again. To have the goal to get rid of malice and sorrow is indispensable for the ‘desired outcome’ of being happy and harmless because unless I have the deliberate and altruistic intent to actively tackle the human condition within me, I am forever at the mercy of the genetically encoded forces of nature – the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. What you call ‘so boring’ is nothing other than the intent to change the ancient and genetically imprinted heritage of human nature.

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There is a diametrical difference between actualism and Byron Katie’s methodology, not only in goal but also in technique.

Yes, there is a difference there. Actualists like to ‘take apart’ and destroy their concepts.

I am pleased that at last you recognize differences between your favourite teachers and actualism because in my experience such acknowledgements can lead to a clear-eyed understanding of what actualism is on about. But it is not that actualists ‘destroy’ their concepts for no reason or purpose – my beliefs and emotions are questioned whenever they stand in the way of me being happy and harmless. The intent comes first and the investigation of beliefs and feelings only happens as a consequence of this intent. In other words, I know what I want – an actual freedom from the human condition of malice and sorrow – and then I do whatever it takes to reach my goal. To investigate without the goal to become actually free from ‘self’ is purely ‘self’-serving.

Tell me – how does one take apart a thought or belief? Do you mock it and call it ‘silly’ to make it go away? Does this wipe the program clear? The computer analogy only goes so far with the mind. Attempts to banish thoughts are ultimately futile.

Actualism is not about banishing thoughts at all – actualism is about becoming free of the instinctual passions that are the source of all of human malice and sorrow. And you again deliberately ignore the most important part of the method of actualism – pure intent. For someone for whom ‘preconceptions are so boring’ pure intent does not even enter the picture of self-investigation and consequently taking apart one’s beliefs will appear ‘futile’. When you have the intent to become free from your insidious good and bad feelings in order to experience the felicitous feelings each moment again, then the investigation into your beliefs and feelings has a purpose and a direction and as such will show incremental success.

I prefer the Byron Katie model – examine your thoughts and beliefs deeply enough and they will unravel naturally. Gentle observation does the trick. That’s been my experience.

Does what trick? What is the purpose of ‘unravelling’ your thoughts and beliefs? What is it you achieve and how do you know that you achieved something if you have no preconceptions and no goal, let alone a benchmark against which to measure your success?

As for ‘gentle observation’ and without ‘preconceptions’ at that – I think the description of the human condition on Richard’s homepage speaks for itself –

The instinctual passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self ... the base consciousness of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that all sentient beings have. The human animal – with its unique ability to be aware of its own death – transforms this ‘reptilian brain’ rudimentary core of ‘being’ (an animal ‘self’) into being a feeling ‘me’ (as soul in the heart) and the ‘feeler’ then infiltrates into thought to become the ‘thinker’ ... a thinking ‘I’ (as ego in the head). No other animal can do this. That this process is aided and abetted by the human beings who were already on this planet when one was born – which is conditioning and programming and is part and parcel of the socialising process – is but the tip of the iceberg and not the main issue at all. All the different types of conditioning are well-meant endeavours by countless peoples over countless aeons to seek to curb the instinctual passions. Now, while most people paddle around on the surface and re-arrange the conditioning to ease their lot somewhat, some people – seeking to be free of all human conditioning – fondly imagine that by putting on a face-mask and snorkel that they have gone deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit ... deep into the human condition.

They have not ... they have gone deep only into the human conditioning. When they tip upon the instincts – which are both savage (fear and aggression) and tender (nurture and desire) – they grab for the tender (the ‘good’ side) and blow them up all out of proportion. If they succeed in this self-aggrandising hallucination they start talking twaddle dressed up as sagacity such as: ‘There is a good that knows no evil’ or ‘There is a love that knows no opposite’ or ‘There is a compassion that sorrow has never touched’ and so on. Which means that the ‘Enlightened Beings’ advise dissociation (wherein painful reality is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. Just as a traumatised victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, the ‘Enlightened Beings’ have desperately done precisely this thing ... during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’.

This is because it takes nerves of steel to don such an aqua-lung and plunge deep in the stygian depths of the human psyche ... it is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee. This is because past the human conditioning is the human condition itself ... that which caused the conditioning in the first place. To end this condition, the deletion of blind nature’s software package which gave rise to the rudimentary animal ‘self’ is required. This is the elimination of ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’.

The complete and utter extinction of ‘being’ is the end to all the ills of humankind. Richard, Homepage

Byron Katie never went ‘deep-sea diving’ herself, she grabbed for the tender passions as soon as there was a chance and blew them up all out of proportion such that she now perceives herself to be God personified, and not only herself but ‘everything and everyone’ as well. There is far, far more to becoming free from the human condition in toto than an intent-less ‘gentle observation’.

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