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How to Become Free from the Human Condition

‘Self’-awareness

Awareness –– being cognizant or conscious (of); informed. Oxford Dictionary

The key to freedom from the Human Condition is the unique capacity of the human brain to be aware of its own functioning. Human beings are thus capable of being aware of both what they are thinking and what they are feeling – feelings being the emotional-mental interpretation of the instinctual passions in operation. This ability is commonly known as self-awareness.

In recent decades, this capacity has also been complemented by the scientific studies of the neuro-biology of the human brain that are heralding the beginning of an empirical understanding of the genetically-encoded instinctual passions.

These scientific studies, firmly based on empirical observations, make nonsense of the traditional denial of the existence of instinctual animal passions in humans and the ancient belief that we are born ‘innocent’.

‘Self’-awareness is possible in human beings in that we have the ability to develop and cultivate an awareness of both the social conditioning of beliefs, morals and ethics one has been instilled with since birth and the feelings and emotions that result from the chemical surges of the instinctual passions in operation. What one is ultimately attempting to do is to achieve a pure ‘self’-less state and this involves observing, investigating and eliminating ‘who’ one thinks one is and ‘who’ one feels oneself to be – a radical procedure, to say the least. This particular aspect of awareness is not a natural phenomenon and needs to be actively cultivated and persistently practiced in order to ensure success. As such, one needs to proceed with a bloody-minded persistence the likes of which one has not mustered before. To do so, one needs firstly to establish a simple, unswerving and primary aim in life – a pure intent to become happy and harmless, as one was in a pure consciousness experience, for 24 hrs. a day, every day. The method of becoming happy and harmless, 24 hrs. a day, every day, is both devastatingly simple and ruthlessly efficient. One needs to continually ask oneself the question …

How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?

The continuous asking of this question is the key to cultivating and developing ‘self’-awareness but it does require persistence and perseverance in order to ensure success …

The essential method is to undertake a total investigation into anything that is preventing one from being happy and harmless now – after all, if one’s aim is to be happy then one needs to be happy now, not at some time in the future, nor some time in the past. The question to ask oneself is – ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This moment is, after all, the only moment I can experience being happy.

Any emotion such as anger, frustration or boredom that is preventing my happiness now, has to be traced back to its cause – the exact incident, thought, expectation or disappointment. At the root of this emotion is inevitably found a socially-instilled belief or an instinctual passion. The awareness, investigation and understanding of these morals, ethics, beliefs and the animal instincts ‘in action’ actually weakens their influence on one’s thoughts and behaviour. The process, if followed diligently and obsessively, will ultimately cause them to disappear completely. The idea being, of course, to eliminate the cause of one’s unhappiness, so that one can experience life at the optimum, now. If one is happy now, then good. One can then ‘raise the bar’ to feeling very good, then excellent, then … perfect.

The method soon presents success incrementally, as freedom from beliefs and instinctual passions is indeed a freedom that results in increased peace and harmony for oneself and in one’s relating with one’s fellow human beings. The method does bring up fear and resistance, because one is dismantling one’s very ‘self’, those very beliefs and passions one holds so dearly.

It sounds so simple, but very few people are even willing to take a small step along the way. Most people would seemingly like their life to be better, but faced with the prospect of actually having to do something themselves, or having to change the way they are, they soon sneak away, only to re-run the old ancient ‘tried and failed’ methods.

Of course, the major fear is that it will work and ‘I’ will ‘be’ no more.

This method of ‘self’-awareness is both concise and down-to-earth in that it concentrates one’s awareness on this moment in time – this very moment, right now, in this very place. The whole emphasis is on ‘how am I experiencing myself now ’? This is not to deny that one doesn’t have a goal and that this goal is in the future – to be happy and harmless, 24hrs. a day, every day. It does take time to work through each of the beliefs, morals, ethics, psittacisms and instinctual passions – to thoroughly investigate them.

By bringing one’s attention to the fact that this is the only moment I can experience being alive, and that if I was happy ten minutes ago and I am not happy now, the fact becomes obvious: I am not happy now. If not, why not? What is the cause, the source? One then has something to do, something to investigate. It is simply nonsense to delude oneself with the spiritual belief that one is already perfect, ‘That’, or ‘Enlightened’ when one knows otherwise.

Always one’s immediate aim is to be happy now, in this only moment one can experience being alive, and one’s ultimate goal is to be happy and harmless 24 hrs. a day, every day.

A curious thing begins to happen when one contemplates upon what it is to be a human being, when one ponders the Human Condition, when one becomes ‘self’-obsessed. Soon every interaction, every emotional reaction, every thought and every feeling is scrutinized in terms of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This is definitely not meditation – it is 180 degrees opposite. This is being fully occupied in the world of people, things and events: not sitting with one’s eyes closed, retreating ‘inwards’ and fearfully hiding from the world as-it-is and people as-they-are.

The vowed aim of meditation is to escape from the world, transcend the ego and ‘become’ the soul – an imaginary and delusionary shifting of one’s identity from mortal to Immortal, from animal to Divine. On the other hand, the whole point of the process of Actual freedom is to be aware of, identify, investigate and eliminate one’s social and instinctual identity – both ego and soul – that is the source of one’s malice and sorrow, and the goal is to become actually happy and harmless, on earth, in this very lifetime.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

© The Actual Freedom Trust