I am pleased to hear that you are unravelling the mystery of ‘man and woman living in harmony’. For me this was the area where I drew my confidence that actualism worked. The first thing was to stop fighting for ‘my’ rights and battling and blaming the other. One of the astounding discoveries for me was that for every conflict of interest there is in fact a win-win solution, and finding that solution replaced the instinctual battle for survival that only has winners and losers. It was important that situations were resolved as a win for everyone and not as compromises because compromising would only call for more compromises so as to not disturb the delicate power balance.

The key, I found, was my commitment for peace and harmony being at the top of my laundry list – right after becoming free from the human condition. This does not mean that I give in or give up nor does it mean that I fight for my rights – it means that I always consider the situation of both parties, mine and the other’s and then put my effort into finding a solution that suits all.

The other vital ingredient for a harmonious living together was to dig into my beliefs of male and female conditioning and find out the facts of the situation. The beliefs that form my gender identity needed to be unravelled and investigated and in the course of that investigation I incrementally stopped being a woman and discovered that I am a human being just like any other, be they man or woman.

Some scientists have observed that parts of the brain are differently active in men and women, thereby claiming that gender differences are hard wired, but I am rather sceptical of their theories given that social gender conditioning begins the moment any newborn infant is declared to be either a boy or a girl. Furthermore, those scientists themselves are strongly biased in their interpretations of data by their own gender identity.

The more you dig into and remove your social identity as a man and your instinctual identity as a male, the more you will find how similar the different genders of human beings really are. I found that, apart from the delicious difference of in-bits and out-bits, there is hardly any actual disparity between male and female human beings – our senses as well as our practical intelligence function in pretty much the same way.

I like how you describe the traditional male role in the man-woman relationship – ‘‘logicking’ my way out’. Usually when I wanted to talk about ‘the relationship’ with my partner, it meant I wanted to talk about my feelings, the unhappy, unsatisfied feelings and expectations that were not being met by the man. Generally, the conflicts were not about particular practical situations that needed solutions but they were about a range of diffuse disgruntled feelings I had that I thought were his responsibility to fix. Apart from the proverbial exceptions to the rule, it is usually the women who play the role of indulging in their feelings in a man-woman relationship, while the men tend to repress their feelings and look for a rational approach to the unpredictable and confusing world of emotions.

When I started to practice actualism I broke with that tradition. One after the other I acknowledged my responsibility both for the outspoken charges and, equally important, for my silent accusations. Every wish to find fault with the other was a red flag indicating that I automatically considered my partner responsible for my happiness and my sadness, which in turn meant that I either consciously or unconsciously blamed him for my aggressive vibes and fearful moods. As an actualist I came to realize that it is solely up to me to be happy and harmless and that blaming anyone else for causing my own unhappiness is me being anything but harmless. The one-to-one relationship has been the largest field of inquiry into my beliefs and my passions in order to become free from their miserable grip.

Personally, I found ‘holding someone at arm’s length’ particularly tedious as I not only had to fend against the other’s attempts to come closer but also against my own yearning to have a more intimate relationship. I knew that by trying to hold back I was impairing myself as much as the other, depriving myself of the opportunity to find out and to learn something new about how to live in peace with a fellow human being. So when I met Peter and he introduced me to actualism, I jumped in with both feet – I wanted to get to the bottom of why I had never been able to achieve the peace and harmony in a relationship I so yearned for. This meant not only experiencing all the feelings that the relationship brought up but also tracing them deep to their instinctual core – the good feelings as well as the bad feelings, the desired feelings as well as the one’s I used to deny – the whole lot.

... I recently found an emotional ‘hook’ in my living together with Peter. I was contemplating about what exactly is standing in the way of ‘self’-immolation and found a bit of an affective identity in action – the ‘me’ who cherished the cozy corner I had in living together peacefully and delightfully. ‘I’ as an identity feel noticed and understood with Peter, he knows the happy ‘me’, the quizzing ‘me’, the puzzled ‘me’, the impatient ‘me’, he knows about ‘my’ aims and fears, ‘my’ quirks and wonderings. And this cozy relationship will certainly cease to be when I become free because then ‘I’ who is doing the relating will cease to be.

... with astounding clarity I experienced myself as completely separate from Peter, two flesh-and-blood human beings not at all affectively or psychically connected in any way.

It was utterly amazing and magical that two complete strangers – as in not psychically connected – get to interact with each other in utter intimacy. In such intimacy there is no ‘me’ trying to pull the strings, no ‘me’ thinking or feeling about ‘me’ in relationship to the other, and a fresh, unmediated and direct experiencing happens on its own accord.

Just to reiterate something that is essential for an actualist to keep in mind during his or her explorations – the aim and process of actualism is not to suppress feelings and emotions but to become aware of them in order to explore them deeply and exhaustively. The automatic reaction is to wheedle one’s way out of feeling the bad feelings – those that are considered bad and immoral or wrong and unethical – and consequently the essential first step is to be aware of one’s habit of suppressing, avoiding, withdrawing or denying them in order to feel superior, stay cool, be strong, rational or logical.

In order for the actualism process to work it is crucial to first get in touch with one’s feelings because if I want to find out about ‘me’ I can’t afford to only investigate the ‘better’ half of my surfacing emotions and ignore, repress or deny the dark side. To allow oneself to experience whatever feeling is happening often needs some investigation into what Peter recently termed the ‘Guardians at the Gate’ – the moral judgements and ethical evaluations that trigger feelings such as guilt, shame, defiance or righteousness whenever one starts to become aware of one’s dark side and feel one’s dark feelings.

And of course neither is there the need to express your feelings or wallow in them in order to become aware of them – after all the most important thing for an actualist is to be happy and harmless. As soon as possible get back to feeling good about being here or feeling excellent about being alive. Then you can put your feet up and spend some time contemplating on what it was that triggered you to stop feeling happy or being harmless. You will then find that it is vital to drop that part of your social identity that is causing you to be unhappy, sad, resentful, annoyed, frustrated, jealous, and so on, if you want to really want to be happy and harmless.

It’s good to hear from you again and that you are gaining some good information from the mailing list. If you find you have a particular issue, concern or worry running at some time you can always dip into the AF website itself where there is a wealth of information and correspondence, categorized by topic for ease of access.

For me, the path to Actual Freedom began with me conducting an extensive investigation into what exactly constitutes male and female conditioning simply because I figured that this gender conditioning was the main reason that man and woman cannot live together in peace and harmony. In the process of this investigation I have explored what exactly makes me tick as a woman – the program of beliefs and instincts with its resulting feelings and emotions. Along the path to freedom I have gradually evaluated and discarded all of the so-called female attributes and values, which women so proudly claim as their main territory – expressing emotions and feelings, feminine insight and intuition, love, nurture and nourishment. I found that my desperately holding on to these attributes and values caused me to fight a continuous battle within myself, and against others, as to which is right and which is wrong – the male version of demanding, desiring, rationalising and displaying reason or the female version of demanding, desiring, emotionalising and displaying emotions. I have found that both versions – both the male and the female – are silly, useless and redundant.

My main focus was to question and examine my own ‘views and attitudes’ as a female in order to arrive at sound, verifiable facts and refreshing non-affective common sense. It was only by relying on down-to-earth facts and common sense that I began to be able to communicate with Peter without emotionally reacting to what he was saying, neither trying to please him nor trying to fight him.

I was also interested in how the male half of the world thinks and feels as it had always been somewhat of a mystery to me what went on in ‘the other camp’. I found that as I began to question my own female programming, I naturally became curious as to how the other half were programmed. Whilst I had my very own ‘spy’, or ‘whistleblower’, from the other camp to fill me in, one can also glean the necessary information as to how the other gender is programmed by a process of curiosity, investigation and objective observation as to how men are programmed.

However, it is vital to put things in the right order – which is first things first. In order to become free from my female identity, I had to investigate my own restrictive ‘views and attitudes’ first. After all, it is these emotionally charged views and attitudes that stand in the way from my experiencing peace in the world-as-it-is … and with people-as-they-are.

The first major breakthrough in becoming free of my female identity was when I investigated my pining for a man’s love and support. This is what I wrote at the time –

One thing that I particularly didn’t like about falling in love was the pining. Whenever I was not with Peter I felt I was tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself. Digging into what could be the reason for my pining, I discovered what I call the ‘Cinderella-syndrome’ – the romantic dream that most women have about the perfect and noble man. We are not only looking for someone who takes care of us when our own strength fails us, but also for someone who gives perspective, meaning, definition and identity to our lives, be it as father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life. According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question, which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’

I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, 44 years old and as silly as a teenager! After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. In the end, I had to admit that, whatever it was, it had not the slightest thing to do with anything that Peter could do for me.

I wanted to be perfect and I had to do it myself. I still had to clean myself up. Just having found a probable good mate had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t the best I could be; that I wasn’t free. I decided there and then to face the challenge, to abandon the love-dream and go for the actual experience – meeting another human being as intimately as possible instead of looking up to him and waiting for him to be the ‘hero of my dreams’.

That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself. I had recovered my autonomy – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness. A Bit of Vineeto

With this realization I had unmasked the female dream in me and, by my determination to not let it stand in the way of my living with another person in peace and harmony, I rendered the dream impotent.

After this event there was a tangible crack in my perception of ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. And once I allowed the first big rift in my female identity, anything was possible. It was a great encouragement to explore further. If I had been on the wrong path with my Cinderella dream, then I could be down the wrong alley in anything that I thought and felt to be right! To examine the remaining aspects of my female identity was not always easy, sometimes even downright scary, but the adventure called me onwards – the adventure to discover actual people in an actual world outside of, and completely independent from, my affective dream world.

It is a grand adventure!

It is fascinating when, with increasing ‘self’-awareness, the world begins to look different. There are cracks in one’s ‘rigid … opinions’, the perception softens as one starts to see beyond the morals and ethics of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. I remember how I was frequently amazed when I began to discover other people as they are, outside of my desires, dreams and fears. Increasingly I was able to perceive them as fellow human beings who went about their business of being alive. The trick was to question my own beliefs and ideas, opinions and principles and replace my morals and ethics with a discernment of what is silly and what is sensible.

It takes effort and persistence to nibble away at all of one’s feelings, beliefs and opinions that constitute the social identity but it is certainly an effort well worth making.

The way I came to live in peace and harmony with a man was that I became free from being a woman.

First there is the social aspect of being a woman, the female role with its beliefs, sentiments and behaviour we have been trained to adopt since early childhood. It consists of all the shoulds and should nots, the right codes of conduct, the collective accepted behaviour of being a woman and the social taboos that are deemed unquestionable. You can clearly see what is social programming because it varies from culture to culture, depends upon religion and spiritual beliefs, is subject to generational and fashion swings and is imposed and maintained by peer pressure.

Then there is the instinctual aspect of being a woman, centred upon instinctual mating and procreation of the species. The program of sexual instinctual passion drove me to search for a man and get pregnant – and then the consequent need to secure the protection of the potential father kicked in. Curiously I found that my decision not to have any children and to be sterilised did not change this underlying instinctual urge at all – I still thought and felt myself to be a woman first and a human being second.

I found that as long as both the social and instinctual aspects of my identity had a strong grip on me, communication was impossible. Only when I examined and investigated my own programming was I able to see the other as a fellow human being and only then communication was really possible.

As for comprehending another’s ‘views and attitudes’, I have found that despite the fact that I have studied the human condition for several years now, I am still often baffled and bewildered at many of the attitudes and behaviours of human beings. In fact, the more I examined and thusly weakened my own identity, the more incomprehensible it is for me that most other people don’t seem to be interested in achieving the same quality of life for themselves. But I have come to see and begun to understand that this choice is their own cup of tea – it has nothing to do with my own happiness and harmlessness. If I find that I make myself dependant upon another’s happiness, or feel responsible for another’s happiness, then I have something to look at.

The wonderful thing about actualism is that everyone can only do it for themselves, in their own time and at their own pace.

When you say ‘too quick’ I am reminded of the ‘quick and dirty processing pathway’ from the thalamus to the Amygdala that LeDoux and his team discovered (see Library Topics – Instinctual Passions). The emotional-instinctual response by its very nature is ‘too quick’, while a deliberate sensible answer requires thinking and contemplation.

I found this bit to be a fascinating bit of science when I first read about it, and consistent with my own discoveries. It just takes that split-second of deferring my responses to take the wind out of their sails. This helped enormously with the external aspects of my relationships with others. This is an example of the appeal (to me) of AF... its sound footing in the concrete/actual... no need for spirits/gods/planetary influences/etc.

As you say, ‘the external aspects of my relationships with others’ were the first to take care of. For me that meant I became determined to stop expressing any of my angry, sad, resentful, irritated, etc. feelings to the people I interacted with. The more ‘split-seconds’ I learnt to put between experiencing those feeling and expressing a thoughtful response, the less I transmitted these feelings to others.

Whilst the first aspect is to stop expressing such feelings to others, it is equally important not to repress them. It is only by not repressing my feelings of anger, sadness or resentment that I am able to experience them and then inquire into the nature of my beliefs and the bits of my identity that triggered those feelings in the first place. Whenever I became aware that I was feeling upset about a comment someone made, I took the opportunity to look for the reason why his or her comment had upset me.

As an example – did his or her comment in a conversation question a dearly held belief or opinion of mine? In that case I questioned why it was so important for me to maintain my belief and I looked deeper into the particular belief or opinion that had been disturbed. Slowly, slowly, with effort and diligence, those – touchy – beliefs were replaced by sound facts and simple sensibility which, in turn, enabled a joie de vivre to supplant the former ambience of doom and gloom.

I would appreciate advice from Richard, Peter, Vineeto or anyone for that matter regarding meeting a potential partner. I’ve never found anyone remotely like Vineeto or Devika to even start the conversation with.

I can’t give you ‘advice … regarding meeting a potential partner’ – all I know is how to become free from malice and sorrow. As an actualist I am, and always have been, committed to change myself and only myself and that is something anybody can do, should they be so inclined.

The least potential candidates were actually from New Age circles or holistic groups. You guys describe the meeting of your partners like you were walking along the road, and then you met an attractive partner and proposed the idea of let’s just ‘go for it’; total togetherness, a leave no stone unturned relationship, with a commitment to not bail out, not use any revelations against one another, and most of all not to fall in ‘love.’

In the last five years I’ve been I sometimes wondered why none of my former friends became interested in actualism, as I did. It seemed such an obvious choice to me, after my years of struggle in the spiritual business had produced no tangible results. The only explanation I have is that I had clearly underestimated the stranglehold that the feelings of love and hope have over people.

As for ‘the idea of let’s just ‘go for it’’ – before I met Peter I had lived without a partner for about 3 years. In this time I had observed relationships and contemplated about living together in peace and harmony with a man and as time went on I became more and more determined to do anything I could to make it work. That meant that I was then ready to review all of my ideas of who was the ‘right’ man, how he should be, how he should look, what he should believe, what he should do, etc. I was ready to undergo a questioning of all my beliefs and expectations in order for a peaceful and harmonious relationship to succeed.

In other words, this intent existed in the period preceding my meeting Peter. Living in peace and harmony with a man had advanced to the very top of my laundry list – it was at that stage the most important thing in my life. As it turned out, this determination was absolutely necessary, because I did indeed have to question everything I ever believed and I examine anything I ever belonged to, and only my pure intent made me to overcome the obstacles and chasms that appeared on the road to perfect harmony.

I don’t know anyone who would want to be involved without the ‘love potentiality’, unless they had done a goodly amount of reading on the site.

The question is not if anyone else ‘would want to be involved without the ‘love potentiality’’ but if you are ready to question all your cherished beliefs and investigate your favourite and familiar feelings in order to become completely happy and harmless. Only a happy and harmless person can live with a partner in peace and harmony – it is an impossibility for a miserable and grumpy person. First things first.

On the subject of my ‘relationship’ with my partner, the matter gets a bit stickier. Since my need to affiliate with other human beings in groups has greatly lessened, to the point of almost being totally absent, I have wondered at times if I transferred these feelings on to my partner and whether I am clinging to her to get these self-same needs met. I do enjoy our being together, and I look forward to our weekends and holidays together, even our simple presence together in the evening when the day is done is very enjoyable. To be honest: I do find myself clinging to her at times with feelings of ‘love’ and affection. Yet I can say that for every moment in which there is this feeling of love and affection, there are counterpoised moments when the invidious passions are in evidence: resentment, peevishness, annoyance. In short, malice. It increases my feeling that you cannot have the positive, loving emotions without having the whole instinctual package. At least, that’s the way I think of it at this point. In other words, the entire package needs to be deleted.

So, I guess where this leaves me is to say that I think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner. It is here that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire occur most clearly and cleanly, compared to my other everyday ‘relationships’. To sum this all up: it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling. If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? These are just a couple of the questions that occur.

You say that you ‘think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner’ and this coincides with my own experience. When I still had an affective relationship with Peter, I could observe, identify and whittle away all the subtle emotions and feelings that never the less occurred long after we both had recognized that love was not the answer to a peaceful living together. The cozy-good feelings of ‘being connected’, the feeling of belonging, feeling safe and protected from the alien world and not being alone were to persist much longer than the easy to recognize failure of the dream of romantic love. Also I discovered I could quite easily and quickly recognize and nip in the bud the negative emotions of relating such as anger and complaints when they occurred but it took a keen and persistent awareness not to repeat falling into the trap of the sweet rose-coloured moods of connectedness.

As a fact, I have been on my own all my life, however, the marked difference used to be that sometimes I felt lonely, insecure or even abandoned by my parents, friends or partners and sometimes, but more rarely, I felt excited, adventurous and thrilled by the feeling of freedom of not being bound by any relationship. These days I would rather say that ‘I am being on my own’ because I am no longer suffering the feelings and emotions that the word ‘alone’ usually conveys.

In terms of living together with Peter, I am on my own in that I take care of myself – my job, my finances, my clothes and my health – and I spend my time doing what I like to do. Then I have the added bonus of doing things with Peter together that we both enjoy, i.e. cooking food, playing in the garden, going for a walk, having a chat, watching TV and enjoying delicious sumptuous sex. I can simply be me, what I am, without feelings or vibes, hopes or fears and without any image or a social identity to be maintained. In my understanding that does not really fit into the category of having a relationship because a relationship is usually based on emotional components such as expectation, obligation, hope, love, worry, duty, loyalty, fear of loss, resentment or feeling responsible for the other’s feelings.

In other words, in a relationship one social and instinctual identity attempts to relate to the other’s social and instinctual identity and both parties are mutually dependent on the other for maintaining their identity, negotiating their individuality and battling their loneliness because a human being only has an identity in relation to other people. A personality is only better than or lesser than, more needy or less needy, stronger or weaker in relation to – i.e. relative to – other personalities. You are hundred percent spot on when you say that ‘the entire package’, both the good and the bad emotions in a relationship, ‘needs to be deleted’.

Last week I met a friend whom I had not seen for seven years and this meeting gave me an opportunity to observe in what way my relating to people has changed since I took up actualism. It was a very enjoyable meeting and a pleasant surprise, contrary to some meetings with other former friends, as we were able to find lots of things in common to talk about despite the fact that I have abandoned my spiritual beliefs and loyalties. It was all made easier by her own discontentment with the outcome of her own spiritual search and her interest in what solutions I have found.

What had changed for me since I had seen her last was that I experienced none of the emotional aspirations that are usually inevitable ingredients to a friendship. In fact, I was aware that I easily responded each moment to what was happening – be it her curiosity or bewilderment, a silent appreciation of our surroundings, a chat about food or living in Australia, her future plans or who she met yesterday. I told her as much about how I live now as she asked to know but felt no need to demand her attention or interest. I was simply me, I did not have an image, beliefs or precious feelings to promote or to defend and I did not feel any emotional bonds, fears and obligations interfering with meeting a fellow human being.

Living in peace and harmony with a person of the other sex has been a life-long dream and when I was presented not only with the opportunity of a sincere commitment but also with the tools to make it work, this dream finally came true. I had watched people living together from an early age and already in my twenties I concluded from observation and experience that playing the traditional role as a wife and/or as a mother would not give me the satisfying relationship I was looking for. In my university days I then discovered that feminism as well as conventional therapy also failed to provide suitable answers to the ending of the battle of the sexes and I then turned to the dream of spiritual love. It took a bit longer to sort that one out. During my spiritual years a relationship with a man became secondary and my love for the Guru became primary until inevitably – and fortunately for me – the Guru died and the uselessness of such an ethereal relationship became glaringly obvious.

Interesting that you should have mentioned feminism. Feminist theory was all the rage when I attended graduate Social Work school, and I would be interested in your own discoveries of why it ‘failed to provide suitable answers to the ending of the battle of the sexes’. I know that there are various brands of feminism, but I am talking in an overarching way about the feminist movement.

The practical benefits I got from the feminism movement were that I learned to confidently take care of myself and to be as equally capable and intelligent as men. Feminism has opened the door to the world for women who were previously confined to the socially-defined roles of ‘cooking, children and church’, as the slogan went. The break up of the traditional confining roles has certainly improved many women’s lives in many ways, particularly in combination with the invention of the pill.

My first disappointment with the ideals of feminism happened in my student years when I discovered that women were as bitchy and conniving with each other as men were with women and as men were with each other. When I watched how women related to each other in the feminist movement, I could see that the notion of women ruling the world would not solve the problem of aggression, revenge, back-stabbing and lust for power. Also the idea of excluding half of the population from one’s life in order to avoid relationship problems didn’t appeal to me.

When I became a disciple of Rajneesh, feminism was in full swing and Rajneesh’s slogan was ‘to be spiritual is to become feminine’. In his commune in Oregon, he put women in charge and men in subordinate positions. The outcome of this experiment in female overt power is well documented. The top female leaders succumbed to the lust for power and many even indulged in criminal activities – they bugged many buildings, set up an election fraud, poisoned a whole town with salmonella, attempted to poison some disciples who were becoming suspicious and in the end packed up and left with a few million dollars of commune funds. When this was revealed, the shock was enormous, not only because they were spiritual, i.e. supposedly good, people but also because they were women. It proved to me beyond doubt that giving ‘the power to the women’ won’t solve any problems.

Although feminism has succeeded in questioning the sensibility of a patriarchal society, it only wants to replace it with a matriarchal system. Feminism’s main focus is on changing the power balance between the genders – it doesn’t question the conflicting social and instinctual identities that are the cause of the battle between the sexes. Men and women are still as much defined by their gender as they were before feminism and the latest fashionable catchphrase that ‘men are from Mars and women are from Venus’ depicts the deep divide that basically entrenches the other gender as alien. Men are considered aggressive Martians while women are considered loving Venusians and nowadays it has become politically correct for women to tear down men whereas men making fun of women is considered offensive. In my student days and in my spiritual era I’ve experienced women’s aggression towards men when I attended women’s groups where women complained, bitched and plotted against their men, boyfriends or bosses and discussed the various strategies needed to ‘win the battle’. Any relationship with a man was seen as a constant battle to ‘make him do what I want’.

Feminism is certainly not the recipe for living in peace and harmony with the other gender.

Living in peace and harmony with my partner is indeed a tall order, and it is here, in the microcosm of one’s intimate relationship, where one finds the proving ground for being ‘happy and harmless’. It is a terrific dare to live happily and harmlessly with another. It takes all the pure intent I’ve got and more to stick with the work, and it is very hard work too. Right now I must say that it seems like an uphill slog, as my instincts seem to have come to the fore again.

It is also enormous fun to live happily and harmlessly with another. But I agree that it does not come easy. To live with Peter in peace and harmony didn’t happen overnight. I had to abandon all my deep seated beliefs about gender – I became a traitor to the women’s camp, I stopped being a woman as society sees it, I questioned my romantic dreams and my archaic suspicions about men, I looked at the instinctual role-play of man as the procreator, provider and protector and woman as the child-bearer, home-maker and nurturer and I examined all my sexual taboos, fears, expectations and instinctive feelings. In hindsight, as I look back on the list of issues, it has been quite a bit of hard work.

I’ve been down the detachment path too, but found it didn’t cut the mustard at all either. Seemed like the baby with the bath water.

On our website we used an adapted illustration from P. Livingston to demonstrate this radical procedure.

Every time I go spelunking in the site, something interesting pops up. You mention love as being one of the hardest to let go of, and this is a real tough spot for me too. I’ve been in a very long-term relationship, which has been strained of late. This whole notion of love is a difficult one, but there’s some interesting dialog you had with Gary at the above link. Before I stumbled on to the AF site, I had determined in my own way that what passes for love seems mostly indistinguishable from mutually interlocking neuroses. OK, that’s fine, but I asked myself if there wasn’t a possibility for man and woman to live together in peace? Well, that’s certainly been answered here, but can I live in peace with this particular woman of many years relationship? That shall come out in the wash, but in the meantime I have no choice but to do this work myself, with strong emphasis on eliminating malice. It has been too easy over the years to build up a nice collection of barbs that I can shoot at her during my own moments of misery.

When I observed my own feelings of love, as well as love stories and soap operas on television, it became obvious that love is the one and only solution that people generate in order to smooth over and cover up all the nasty daily incidents in a relationship. When the going gets tough you can be certain that man and woman profess how much they love each other. The other thing is that love inevitably comes with a whole range of feelings that make life together either a living hell or a second-rate compromise – possessiveness, jealousy, disrespect, ruthlessness, blame and demands for attention, comfort and support.

To become aware of and investigate the feelings of love can be a first step towards genuine intimacy. The secret of living in peace with another person is not love, as is universally believed, but investigating – and eliminating – everything in you that is responsible for causing disharmony, resentment, retreat, detachment, disagreement and misery. You can do this investigation together with the other person – if she is interested – but it works just as well to do it on your own. What had impressed me when I first met Peter was that he was willing to give the experiment of our peaceful living together a hundred percent commitment and that he was, just a I was, determined not to blame or change the other.

This bit from Gary registered:

I found myself recently ‘slipping’ and telling my partner ‘I love you’. It was during one of those ‘nice and cosy’ periods, like you describe (below). It really felt like it just slipped out and that I didn’t really mean it. It also seemed like it is just a reflexive habit, you know, when one is in such moods to give utterance to such endearments. And there really is no difference between saying ‘I love you’ and saying ‘I care for you’ or ‘I want to be with you’. All these sentiments pretty much add up to the same thing. When I first read this post, I was having trouble grasping just what you meant by ‘consciously allow the feeling to happen in order to fully understand and explore it experientially’. I think I have been kind of regarding Love as a no-no and quashing the feelings when they come up rather than simply allowing them and exploring them when they do. I think I’ll give that a try. Gary to Vineeto, 21.9.2000

I had a good chuckle, esp. ‘‘slipping’ and telling my partner ‘I love you’’. I’ve been there quite a few times, the words pop out, then I’m something like the deer in the headlights, trying to make sense of what I just said. I’ve been considering love a no-no too, so perhaps taking his tack would be an interesting approach. (Was it, Gary?)

This is a good example of how an ‘ethical safe-guard’ can prevent you from becoming aware of and acknowledging a feeling. By considering the feeling of love a no-no, you might ignore, deny or avoid the feeling of love whenever it occurs and thus you are hampered in investigating it further. For a successful investigation you need an honest and all-inclusive stocktaking.

While all this is well and good as a practical bit, I know I run a real risk of the relationship ending. I’m willing to take that as it’s become clear that there are no alternatives. This raises a whole flurry of feelings, around responsibility, shared history, relationship with the progeny, who gets the dog, bla bla bla.

Here is a bit from Peter’s Journal that might be relevant in your situation –

The other vital ingredients to guarantee success were intent and peak experiences. We both had intent. I was willing to give it everything I could, and Vineeto likewise. The point was that I was doing it for me, I wanted to make it work and I would do everything I could to make it work. Then, even if it did fail, I wouldn’t be left with that feeling that I had held back; that I could have done more, that the ‘shackles’ had won out again. Peter’s Journal, Living Together

Speaking personally, ‘I’ lost everything. ‘My’ wife, ‘my’ children, ‘my’ business, ‘my’ house, ‘my’ car ... the lot. But, most importantly, I lost ‘me’ ... and they were ‘his’ wife, children, business, house, car and so on, anyway ... not mine. I inherited all ‘his’ stuff when ‘he’ disappeared, and I took five years to taper-off all of ‘his’ legacy. Nowadays, being me as-I-am, I have an entirely new life that is infinitely better ... vastly superior. That lifestyle was ‘his’ choice, not mine, and suited ‘his’ temperament only. Richard’s Journal, Article 36

The good catholic boy in me reacted to this. I have been such a responsible being all my life that this POV is incomprehensible. This is abdication of ALL GOOD CHRISTIAN/HUMAN PRINCIPLES. Yet at the same time I see the utter plain truth of this.

Personally, everything I owned, did or said and every person I was in contact with had great emotional significance to me as an identity and therefore every change in my familiar circumstances brought about an emotional disturbance. With the method of actualism, I gradually examined and substantially weakened most aspects of my identity and consequently some of my circumstances changed according to what was practical, sensible and beneficent. I gave up my old job, I lost contact with all my former friends and co-seekers, I moved house several times and gave away some of my possessions that had become redundant to me. Yet I still drive a car, live in a house, tend a garden, do a job, but there are no emotional strings attached to that car, that house, that garden or that job.

It actually makes my head spin a bit ... definitely some ‘opportunities’ to explore.

This is a good sign, if I may say so, because when your head begins to ‘spin a bit’ then the familiar identity begins to crack … and through this crack you could snatch a glance of the actual world – magnificent, sparkling, pure and perfect.

2. You are moments away from leaving your spouse after a long, deep relationship. The spouse announces that she has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Do you stay to help her (familial, genetic and social programming), or do you leave as planned in order to be happy?

Generally speaking, as a practicing actualist I am happy and harmless regardless of what situation I am living in.

Being virtually free from the human condition, I am no longer bound by morals and ethics – there is no such thing as actual-freedom-morals or ethics – nor am I driven by instinctual passions and, as such, whatever I do is without malice and sorrow. Morals and ethics only exist because of the need to keep the lid on the selfish instinctual passions and when these passions no longer rule the roost I am able to make a sensible decision about what is appropriate and best for everyone in the situation, me included.

The second thing to consider is that, as an actualist, I investigate all my emotions that inevitably come up when relating to other people, the ‘bad’ emotions like greed, anger, withdrawal, fear and hate as well as the ‘good’ emotions like love, beauty, trust, hope and faith. When there is neither love nor hate, neither fear nor trust, neither despair nor hope clouding my perception then it is inevitable that no matter who I live with I will live with the person, or persons, in utter peace and harmony.

Maybe these are trite examples, but they are in the real world. Thanks.

Actualism is about living in the world as it is with people as they are. I am not intending to change other people – or the world – but I whittle away at removing what prevents me from being happy and harmless right here, right now.

I’m starting to realize that AF presents a very radical shift, despite its apparent simplicity. I was talking with my wife, who is an intelligent person, about some of the genetic and cultural programs running in our brains and was surprised at how resistant she was to exploring their nature. While she admitted that they existed, she didn’t believe they could be modified, and more importantly, believed they were valuable, if not a key component of her very self. To lose them would be to lose her ‘self’. That’s scary.

I have heard similar stories from other men when they were talking to their female companions about investigating emotions and being female, I thought I would contribute some insider information about gender conditioning.

One of the first things I began to explore when I came across actualism was my own gender conditioning, and I also learnt a lot about the conditioning of the male camp, which had always been somewhat of a mystery to me. Given that my aim was to live in peace and harmony with Peter, the first and obvious obstacles to a harmonious equity were those beliefs and feelings that were linked to my identity as a woman. I found that women, much more than men, are taught to value feelings as the being the final arbiter of assessing any given situation – and I discovered that I was no different. I used to rely much more on my intuition than on common sense and I gave far more credence to experiencing a situation emotionally rather than acknowledging the facts of the situation. Additionally, this conditioning was enhanced and confirmed by Eastern spiritual teaching, which admonishes all seekers to ‘trust your feelings’ and to ‘leave your mind at the door’ when meditating.

In my explorations I found that my social conditioning as a woman was deeply connected to the instinctual female role of a child-bearer and nest-maker. Women are encouraged to be more emotional while men are expected to be successful hunters and providers in the world for which one needs to use brawns and brains more than feelings and emotions. Consequently, expressing feelings and knowing how to put them to use was my most valuable asset for yielding power over others in order to get what I wanted, particularly in my relationships with men. But apart from being a power-tool, feelings were also the main ingredient of my identity as a woman – ‘I’ am first and foremost my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’.

Only because I was deeply fed up with the havoc that my feelings created in my life and the life of others around me, was I able to see the sense in questioning all of my feelings – because examining my feelings is a tangible step to being able to be intimate with all of my fellow human beings regardless of their gender. It’s a lonely business being trapped on either side of the gender divide.

Only because I was deeply fed up with the havoc that my feelings created in my life and the life of others around me, was I able to see the sense in questioning all of my feelings – because examining my feelings is a tangible step to being able to be intimate with all of my fellow human beings regardless of their gender. It’s a lonely business being trapped on either side of the gender divide.

The constant state of tension brought by the animal hunger of the male for the female, and the female’s control of that situation, has long been a painful place for me.

I can tell you that ‘the female’s control of that situation’ is only perceived as such on the male’s end. For instance, the whole movement of women’s liberation was born of the idea that the men had control over the women’s lives. In other words, each side in the battle of the sexes sees the other side as being the controller, being more dominant, being more manipulative, being unable to understand the other, and so on. The idea that someone else is in control of my life is in itself part of the automatic instinctual battle for power between the sexes and the first step to become free of feeling controlled and being controlled was for me to admit that, and find out how, I was driven by my own instinctual passions and shackled by my own imbibed social identity of being a woman.

The more I discovered that the cards were distributed equally, i.e. equally restrictive for both genders, the more my defensiveness and my idea of being a victim dropped and I was then able to explore precisely what convictions and conventions, roles and rules I had taken on board about what it is supposed to mean to be a woman. The way I began to unravel the mystery of the eternal battle between the genders was easy – whenever I got upset about anything Peter or another man said to me or about me, I had something to look at. Whenever I found myself about to defend my convictions about what women are or what they should do or how they could be, I became aware that there was a piece of my identity as a woman in it as well. Whenever I dared to replace such a dearly held idea, passion or dream with facts a piece of my identity as a woman also went down the drain.

After a few initial fears and hesitations and as those roles and rules were slowly uncovered and discarded, it became increasingly delightful to find out that the differences that I had imagined existed between genders were disappearing. A few months into our relationship and into my explorations about my conditioning I suddenly looked at Peter and saw him without perceiving him as a man and my lover and all that it entailed. It was such a shock at first because I had never been able to look at him without simultaneously overlaying an image of what I wanted or feared or dreamt of. Suddenly there was a human being sitting next to me – and I had never seen that human being before, because I had been so busy with what I felt and thought about him. It is a delicious magic when the curtain of instinctual ‘self’-centredness breaks, if only for a few moments at first, and gives way to experiencing an intimate meeting with another fellow human being.

I agree with all of what you say, but it doesn’t seem complete. It works for individual relationships, ...

As you say ‘I agree with all of what you say’ – I take it that you understand that it is possible for you to change the immediate world in which you live as far as living together with your companion is concerned. If you can see that the actualism method works for your ‘individual relationship’ then you can also see that your becoming happy and harmless will contribute significantly to the peace and harmony in your house. Somebody has to be amongst the first to turn around 180 degrees and stop perpetuating malice and sorrow in the world.

So far, in some 5000 years of written history, none of the revered spiritual teachings have succeeded in bringing anything remotely resembling peace on earth. Thousands upon thousands of teachers have expounded the Truth and millions upon millions of disciples have diligently applied the teachings of the Truth and still there is fighting and squabbling, murdering and raping, torturing and suiciding. Once one stops one’s cherished beliefs standing in the way of the facts, it becomes blindingly obvious that the Revered Teachings of the Enlightened Ones do stuff all for peace on earth, in fact they add even more passion to the religious and spiritual fervour that flames conflict and animosity, despair and denial, hostilities and persecution – as is made evident by the spiritual correspondents on this list.

But if you are still convinced that enlightenment will deliver the goods – whatever that means for you – then surely it is good to abandon the ‘real’ world and get on with the business of pursuing the subject of spiritual enlightenment rather than waste your time and spleen on this list. Get out of the real world and get right into the middle of the spiritual world and make your own observations and have your own experiences. This is exactly what I did and the view from the inside is not at all pretty.

For instance, none of the Enlightened Ones has ever been reported as living with a woman in peace and harmony, equity and parity – it is not even on their agenda. The girlfriend of Mohan Rajneesh was so depressed in the end that she committed suicide whereas he is known to have indulged in blow jobs from a number of female disciples, Franklin Jones aka Da Free John is notoriously famous for his sexual orgies that included under-aged young girls, Jiddu Krishnamurti is reported to have had a longstanding secret affair with his best friend’s wife, a globe trotting guru from the town where I live has just separated from his wife and two children because of too many domestics, married man John deRuiter is said to have invited two additional wives into his home because the Truth told him so ... The list of dysfunctional human relations in the master-disciple-world goes on and on, if one is at all ready to see with both eyes open what a rotten and corrupt profession the guru business really is.

This mailing list is set up for those who are genuinely interested in investigating exactly the nature of those passions that the Revered Masters of the East have not had the guts to look at in themselves – the blind instinctual passions of fear and aggression as well as nurture and desire.

As a woman I found it particularly revealing and revolting that none of the oh so wise gurus had tackled even the first step of peace in action – to live with one other person in utter peace and harmony. And as for their expounded wisdom – neither meditation nor therapy has offered any useful advice for a satisfying peaceful relationship and nobody can say that I haven’t tried hard enough. But after seventeen years I finally threw in the towel and admitted failure and started to question the revered teachings themselves.

Actualism has offered me the tool to achieve this life-long goal of living with a man in peace and harmony and I know from my own experience that it works, 100%. There is not a single bickering, no trace of resentment or even a compromise in my relationship with Peter. There is no dependency, no jealousy, no disappointments, no scoring points, no neediness and no fear of loneliness – living together is simply great fun, day after delicious day. Sex is an ever-fresh innocent sensual play whenever the opportunity arises, a physical-only sensational delight that leaves any wild fantasy for dead. Gone are the days when I was plagued by worry, fear, guilt, shame, expectation, complaint, dissatisfaction or the undignifying need for sex. I never think of sex during the day or the night, I never fantasize and I never miss it, I no longer look at men as desirable sexual objects or would-be predators – I simply see fellow human beings regardless of gender.

Like people judging the whole Christian civilization only from the Inquisition, the Opus Dei and the Borgia popes. I mention Ramana, Nisargadatta and Aurobindo and you reply with the ‘enlightened Ones Rajneesh, Da Free John and John deRuiter’. Please be honest enough to consider they don’t play in the same category. Please be honest to acknowledge you use caricatures.

Why do you think that Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj and Aurobindo Ghoose don’t play in the same category as Mohan Rajneesh, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Franklin Jones and John deRuiter’? Are they not all declaring themselves to be enlightened and are they not all offering their teaching as the solution to a suffering mankind? Do you think there is ‘good’ Enlightenment and ‘bad’ Enlightenment? Usually people have one or several pet gurus and a particular pet teaching, which is, of course, ‘better than everybody else’s belief’ in the typical competitive style common to all beliefs.

However, in order to investigate what those teachings have practically contributed to peace on earth, one needs to step back and look at the whole guru business per se. Upon honest inquiry you will find that no spiritual master has ever lived in peace, harmony, equity and parity with a woman and no Goddess has ever lived in peace, harmony, equity and parity with a man because of the holier-than-thou nature of Enlightenment itself. The companion of a master, if He or She chooses to have one, will always be a devoted disciple and willing servant, humbling and belittling themselves to earn shares in good karma by serving and pleasing God’s latest representative or God’s latest incarnation.

I am not using particular ‘caricatures’ but well-known teachers – or do you consider Jiddu Krishnamurti being a caricature as opposed to ‘Beedi Baba’, as Nisagadatta used to be called? It seems to me that you are stretching your case a bit thin here. However, if you investigate the Holy Men’s and Women’s lives you will become shockingly aware that living in peace and harmony with a partner is not even on their spiritual agenda – it is not part of God’s message, it is part of the ‘Maya’ that has to be transcended. The very principle of Eastern spiritual teaching is rotten to the core – every enlightened teacher is a caricature of a mythical non-existent God as in ‘an exaggerated or debased imitation or version (of), naturally or unintentionally ludicrous’ Oxford Dictionary. To say that some are better than others is to defend the indefensible.

Of course, at first, it is an enormous blow to one’s pride to have bet on the wrong horse, but then again, to be spiritual has been the only alternative so far to being normal. Now that there is a third alternative available, anyone who is willing can put God and his/her mind-numbing devotion for God’s Go-Betweens into the dustbin where they belong and get on with the business of becoming free from malice and sorrow.

It is so good, No. 26, to be free from spiritual belief. Not just Rajneeshism, but free from all spiritual belief – all belief in any God by whatever name, in life after death, in good and evil spirits or in the supposedly theomorphic nature of our planet. This freedom from all spiritual belief gives one dignity for the first time in one’s life.

Jealousy? This one is a little more complex. Jealousy consists of the fear of losing your spouse. But this is also a sign that shows how special she is in your life. This is, why many women are flattered by the fact that their spouse is jealous. The problem with jealousy is not so much the emotion, but how it is shown. If you try to limit your spouse in her actions (by trying to place her in a position whereby she is not able to meet other men) then she will experience this as suffocating. However, if you understand, that vinegar is not the way to attract flies, but honey is, you express this jealousy of yours differently. You do not try to limit her span of activities, but you express your feeling about how special she is more directly.

Now, this statement on jealousy is really cunning. I suspect you are quite afraid to tackle that issue. That’s why you turn it round and say that the woman wants you to be jealous. You express your feeling about how special she is not because you mean it but because you want to bind her. You are not openly jealous, just more tricky. Jealousy is part of possessiveness that comes in the packet of instincts to continue the species. It has been the cause of many horrendous crimes and murders. Most impulsive crimes are crimes of jealousy.

In my relationship with Peter there is neither possessiveness nor jealousy. We simply live together because we enjoy to. Each is free to do what he/she wants and that is the basis of our peace and harmony. When I felt jealousy I simply had to look for the cause of it, and that cause is fear, fear of being alone, insecure, unprotected, abandoned. Eliminating the fear has made jealousy completely redundant. And why should Peter prove through jealousy that I am special to him. I am, that’s why he lives with me. There is no need for any other proof. If one day he should decide to live alone, or with someone else, I will still be at ease because I have no fear to be on my own.

In fact, my definition of love is: ‘Not putting anything in the way of what your partner wants’. It is a special case of a more general principle: ‘Every individual is there in the first place for him/herself. Therefore it is wrong to ask anything from anybody, or to take anything for granted.’

I agree with you that this would be a good contract to start a harmonious relationship. In my experience though, the moment love with all its conditioning enters, it destroys this wonderful intention. There is simply no way to forever control, i.e. repress emotions, they do surface quite soon in the course of living together, as you can probably testify from your own experience or the evidence your neighbours seem to give you. With love enters inevitably possessiveness, jealousy, expectation for attention, care, admiration, ‘I scratch your back, you scratch my back’, and in no time freedom and harmony are replaced by compromise, discontentment, misunderstanding, battle and defeat.

My loved one has had many relationships before she met me. None of them lasted long, because all of these men wanted her to be their servant in one or another form. She was even fed up with men, before she met me. She said that the principal thing she appreciates so much about me is that I do not put any claims on her without her consent, and that I do anything to help her to develop herself in the way she wants.

Is she also helping you to develop yourself in the way you want? Or have you already arrived? How can she ever be equal to you if you are her ‘developing aid’? You would always be the superior one. The moment the other starts thinking for him/herself, peace is over.

*

And there we come to your part of the story. You answered in an earlier letter to my writing:

Women, on the other hand, generally use emotional outbreaks to distract and divert from an issue or subject that scares them. They are conditioned to swim in emotionality rather than sort things out, ie. eliminate the cause, with a strait-forward intelligence. Accordingly, I had used sulking, guilt, stubbornness, being paranoid or angry to not give up my dearly held familiar beliefs and behaviours (often unconscious); even if those beliefs had failed for years. In order to live in peace and harmony, instead of using my well-practiced defence mechanisms, I had to put exactly those female ‘weapons’ under scrutiny and cast them aside.

Well, let me tell you that I have been married to a woman using just those techniques you described. The marriage only lasted for 4 years. So I can go along with you here.

Now, I have told you I have cleaned myself up from the female parts of the disease called ‘Human Condition’ and you very happily agreed to this being a good idea. But it does not mean that I took on the male parts of that very same disease. This has often been the typical male reaction to Peter’s and my writing: The men would fold their arms, lean back and pass the book on to their girlfriends, saying, ‘look, he has confirmed that you are wrong. Go and change so I can be happy.’ They completely missed the point of the matter!

Leaving the ‘female’ and ‘male’ world behind, means that I entered the world of common sense, practical down-to-earth thinking and communication on the basis of facts perceived through the senses and applying my intelligence without the burden of either emotions or rationality. This is the third alternative to ‘male’ or ‘female’ thinking, using common sense to evaluate facts and solutions as either sensible or silly. Mind you, common sense has nothing to do with common knowledge or physicist’s equations. It is the free operation of the intelligence based on the perception of all the senses and unaffected by emotions, feelings or otherwise preconceived ideas. Mind you, the important thing is to take the situation in account with ALL your senses – which gives common sense the down to earth quality that the abstract thinking you are using is lacking so much!

The male version of the disease called the Human Condition includes arrogance, superiority, theorising, display of knowledge just to impress or attack, competition, aggression, malice, repression of feelings and emotions and such more. How can one gender be right and the other wrong? Now you did not even consider that men as well have their share of cleaning up to do. Your response quoted above displays very well those male weapons and they were meant to harm, to put me off and to score points. I call this outright malice. How can you claim to be advanced in your ‘process’ when you have not even eliminated the instinct to hurt and attack? And why did most great thinkers, logician, scientists and spiritual gurus need wives or caretakers to look after their physical needs, while they were retreating into a construct of thought, based on either logic or spiritual belief to escape this so terrible world? I take it that you are no different to those escapists, Konrad.

Good to hear that you ‘back to normal’. I take it that this ‘ability’ of your mind to have you ‘run crazy all over the planet’ is something that you choose to have, for whatever reason. Once you choose to find out the reason it eventually stops being ‘subconscious’.

My partner is happy to have me here, and I am happy to be here with her. But it’s not always just nice and a lot of drama is happening sometimes. Human nature!!!!

I had thought that because your partner really liked Peter’s Journal and the idea of living together with a man in peace and harmony, equity and intimacy, that both, you and her, might be inclined to start a similar experiment as did Peter and I, sorting out the gender issues and power plays and the other emotions, conditionings and beliefs, that keep you from living together peacefully and happily, every day.

It’s curious, the people I have talked or written to who were interested in Actual Freedom often bemoaned that they did not have a partner with whom to do the exploration into the Human Condition. Personally, as you can read in our journal, I had found our joint adventure a great help and inspiration – not to mention immense fun – to discover the workings of ‘human nature’, the Human Condition, together with someone as eager and motivated as myself. And the success is always instant, the liberation obvious, the fun and intimacy palpable and the sex scrumptious, ever-fresh and luscious.

Just to water your mouth a bit more, I quote what Peter wrote to a correspondent just two days ago:

By daring to remove the socially-instilled moral and ethical inhibitions that act to shackle and spoil all human sexual play I was able to investigate the base instinctual sexual passions ... whereupon I discovered the very reasons that society imposes its shackles and no-nos in the first place. The human sexual passions are inseparably intertwined with our genetically encoded animal survival instincts, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. As such, I discovered deep-down in me the reason men and women are perpetually at war, the source of jealous murderous rage, the rapist in me, the sexual hunter, the sexual animal, the hellish sexual realms, the fear of being consumed, etc.

It is a fascinating journey to travel to the depths of one’s very own psyche but it is immensely rewarding for I have faced my demons and found them to be very, very real but not actual. These discoveries have enabled me to free myself of being driven by the instinctual sexual passions and blind, driven sex and what remained is open eyed, luscious, scrumptious, sensuous, sensual, sumptuous, voluptuous, delightful, delicious; sometimes sweet and gentle, and sometimes bawdy and risqué, sometimes a frolic, a gamble a dance, a lark, or a romp – never-ever the same, and never-ever boring.

To have broken free of my sexual predatory instincts and from societal mystiques and taboos has made all of the effort, and all of the fears faced, well, well worth it. Sexual play puts a ‘three lemon grin’ on my face every time, to use Vineeto’s term.

Sex is one of the most fascinating explorations on the path to freedom for it encapsulates the extent to which human sensuousness is inhibited in the real world and denied in the spiritual world. I wrote about sex in my journal but sex is not something that interests spiritual seekers – it is definitely off the agenda. They do tend to deliberately hide themselves away from sensuousness.

What a silly thing to do, for the actual world abounds with sensual delight. Peter, General Correspondence No 4

*

I was just curious how you are doing down in Tasmania

I am happy you were curious.

Of course, I am curious. I have found such a treasure with this third alternative, such an easy way to be both happy and harmless, to fulfill my highest and purest aspirations and be sensible and sensuous at the same time, that I still cannot comprehend why only very few people are interested in such way of life. Everybody fervently and fearfully holds on to their emotions and beliefs, their spiritual group, their safe suffering, while right under their very noses there is perfection and paradise available, if only one wants it.

Your partner seemed thrilled by our story and you were at least impressed by what you heard, so I am naturally curious what becomes of this initial interest. One day, somewhere, there will be another Peter and Vineeto to become pioneers in an actual freedom, exploring and living peace on earth.

Cheers to you and your partner

The longer I observe how I am in relation to other people, the more I find that whenever another person evokes an affective reaction in me then there is some kind of invisible thread or emotional hook also present on my side. I remember a visit from a close relative and how at first I felt guilty for not returning the love, affection and excitement that was offered to me. It was as if a web of invisible, yet sticky vibes was cast out to catch me into feeling loyal to and connected with her. These bonding strings might well be presented as a generous offer of love or friendship, yet – often unbeknownst to the person himself or herself – this offer always contains a request for returned feelings, a demand for support and an obligation for further loyalty. In other words, love is never unconditional, it is always given with conditions and it is only received subject to conditions.

Nowadays I hardly notice ‘me’ as an affective identity interfering whenever I relate to people in day-to-day affairs. When I go out to work or chat with the neighbours I am pleasantly anonymous, nobody really knows what I think or feel about life and the universe, and I am simply what I am and what I do – a fellow human being chatting about the garden, a bookkeeper, a customer standing in the queue in the post office or being served at a coffee shop.

It therefore came as somewhat of a surprise when I recently found an emotional ‘hook’ in my living together with Peter. I was contemplating about what exactly is standing in the way of ‘self’-immolation and found a bit of an affective identity in action – the ‘me’ who cherished the cozy corner I had in living together peacefully and delightfully. ‘I’ as an identity feel noticed and understood with Peter, he knows the happy ‘me’, the quizzing ‘me’, the puzzled ‘me’, the impatient ‘me’, he knows about ‘my’ aims and fears, ‘my’ quirks and wonderings. And this cozy relationship will certainly cease to be when I become free because then ‘I’ who is doing the relating will cease to be.

I explored this particular ‘hook’ on which my identity hung at first tentatively, then more boldly, knowing well that at any time I could discover the core of it and be lost. As part of this investigation I chatted to Peter about my explorations and a few days later to Richard, just to make sure that I would not succumb to the temptation of ‘forgetting’ a topic so close to the bone.

My persistent inquiry triggered a pure consciousness experience and with astounding clarity I experienced myself as completely separate from Peter, two flesh-and-blood human beings not at all affectively or psychically connected in any way. It was utterly amazing and magical that two complete strangers – as in not psychically connected – get to interact with each other in utter intimacy. In such intimacy there is no ‘me’ trying to pull the strings, no ‘me’ thinking or feeling about ‘me’ in relationship to the other, and a fresh, unmediated and direct experiencing happens on its own accord.

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.