Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

June 07 2006

RESPONDENT: Richard, I am a new visitor to your website.

RICHARD: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list... only about a third of The Actual Freedom Trust web site is mine (the pages with my name in the URL).

RESPONDENT: I thoroughly enjoyed reading your writing. I have already put the method to practise. A few questions: a) After asking the question, I am able to realize that I’m not feeling good but haven’t been able to get back to feeling good. What should I do?

RICHARD: Find out why ... what has happened between the last time one felt good (a general sense of well-being) and now: when did one feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous/ innocuous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’ and so on and so on. One does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most. Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good ... but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand ... it takes some doing to start off with, but as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive.

The wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity and innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way.

One is thus soon back on track ... and all because of everyday events.

RESPONDENT: b) Is there any age limit to practise the actual freedom method? I ask this as I’m only seventeen and a half.

RICHARD: Any person old enough to read and comprehend these words is old enough to put the actualism method into practice.

June 10 2006

RESPONDENT: Richard, you have written somewhere that life is neither purposeful nor purposeless. Could you explain that?

RICHARD: Yes ... that is a spiritualist/ materialist dichotomy which has no existence in actuality.

RESPONDENT: Can I have your views on abortion (are you pro-life or pro-choice?), euthanasia and ‘the right to suicide’?

RICHARD: You certainly can ... (a) I had a vasectomy so that no woman will ever be faced with having to make such a choice on my account ... (b) were physical pain to become of such magnitude and prevalence as to be unbearable then the inevitable unconsciousness unto death will ensure no person ever be put in such a position about me ... and (c) the altruistic ‘self’-immolation of the identity in residence all those years ago rendered any notion of ever killing myself simply risible.

RESPONDENT: You have also written that you have no desires (To wish or long for; want. To express a wish for; request).

RICHARD: More to the point ... desire itself, along with the other instinctual passions bestowed by blind nature at conception (such as fear and aggression and nurture), has no existence whatsoever here.

RESPONDENT: Then what prompts you to write to this mailing list?

RICHARD: Put succinctly: fellowship regard.

RESPONDENT: Is there no desire to see the peoples of the world free from the human condition?

RICHARD: None at all.

RESPONDENT: Personally, I don’t understand how one can live without desires. I can fully comprehend having desires and not being attached to them but I find living without them a little hard to digest.

RICHARD: Whereas I find such detachment from oneself (‘I’ am ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ desires are ‘me’) impossible to digest.

June 16 2006

RESPONDENT: Richard, you have written somewhere that life is neither purposeful nor purposeless. Could you explain that?

RICHARD: Yes ... that is a spiritualist/ materialist dichotomy which has no existence in actuality.

RESPONDENT: Can you elaborate on the following: the question of life being purposeful or purposeless ‘is a spiritualist/ materialist dichotomy which has no existence in actuality?

RICHARD: The very notion of purpose presupposes a purposer – ‘a person who purposes something; esp. a person who has a particular object or intention’ (Oxford Dictionary) – and the entire purposeful/ purposeless debate betwixt spiritualists and materialists revolves around spiritualists contending that their god/ goddess (an immaterial creative being, force, or energy, by whatever name) has a purpose for creating/ manifesting the universe and that life without such a timeless and spaceless and formless entity in it means that everything is purposeless ... which, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means ‘done or made without purpose or design; having no purpose, plan, or aim’.

The direct experience of infinitude – ‘a boundless expanse; an unlimited time’ (Oxford Dictionary) – here in this actual world renders both notions null and void ... it is a spiritualist/ materialist dichotomy which has no existence in actuality.

RESPONDENT: I can clearly and vividly remember a few PCE’s and I also remember thinking during those PCE’s that this (that) was the only moment I could experience being alive and that there wasn’t any inherent meaning in life.

RICHARD: What the phrase ‘meaning in life’ more generally refers to – rather than being equated with purposeful/ purposeless – when asking whether there is any is significance ... as in whether life has any significance or whether it of no consequence.

Needless is it to add that life is bursting with significance in actuality?

RESPONDENT: Meaning is to be found in experiencing each moment to its fullest and clearly experiencing the perfection inherent to the universe.

RICHARD: Here in this actual world, where it is never not this moment (time has no duration in actuality), life is intrinsically meaningful due to that very perfection.

*

RESPONDENT: For the past few days after running the question I have met with more success but I haven’t yet been able to induce a PCE. Asking the question doesn’t produce a huge change but it effectively makes me realize that I haven’t felt good for a brief period of time and hence the question was asked. I am, usually, able to getting back to feeling good but not able to induce a PCE. Can I have your help, Richard?

RICHARD: Perhaps the following summary of the way the actualism method works in practice may be of assistance:

1. Activate sincerity so as to make possible a pure intent to bring about peace and harmony sooner rather than later.
2. Set the standard of experiencing, each moment again, as feeling felicitous/ innocuous to whatever degree humanly possible come-what-may.
3. Where felicity/ innocuity is not occurring find out why not.
4. Seeing the silliness at having those felicitous/ innocuous feelings be usurped, by either the negative or positive feelings, for whatever reason that might be automatically restores felicity/ innocuity.
5. Repeated occurrences of the same reason for felicity/ innocuity loss alerts pre-recognition of impending dissipation which enables pre-emption and ensures a more persistent felicity/ innocuity through habituation.
6. Habitual felicity/ innocuity, and its concomitant enjoyment and appreciation, facilitates naïve sensuosity ... a consistent state of wide-eyed wonder, amazement, marvel, and delight.
7. That naiveté, in conjunction with felicitous/ innocuous sensuosity, being the nearest a ‘self’ can come to innocence, allows the overarching benignity and benevolence inherent to the infinitude this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe actually is to operate more and more freely.
8. With this intrinsic benignity and benevolence, which has nothing to do with ‘me’ and ‘my’ doings, freely operating one is the experiencing of what is happening ... and the magical fairy-tale-like paradise, which this verdant and azure earth actually is, is sweetly apparent in all its scintillating brilliance.
9. But refrain from possessing it and making it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared.

*

RESPONDENT: Can you also elaborate on a statement you made earlier: ‘Giving a child a lot of licence (aka the freedom to be themself as they instinctually are) is hardly the stuff of a good, solid, well-balanced foundation’.

RICHARD: All children are born with instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, and a child given a lot of freedom to (thus impulsively) be as fearful/ aggressive/ nurturant/ desirous as they instinctually are falls more into the category of being a neglected child than anything else.

June 23 2006

RESPONDENT: Richard, do you have personal likes and dislikes: do you prefer certain foods to other, certain activities to others, certain television programmes to others and certain sports to others?

RICHARD: I do have personal preferences ... one of which is a marked disinclination to engage in any sport or sporting activity (including all aspects of spectatorism).

There is, for instance, a preference for omnivorism over vegetarianism; a preference for water-based activities (boating, swimming, and so on) over land-based activities (hiking, mountaineering, and so forth); a preference for comedic entertainment over the dramatic/ a documentary over a fantasy/ the voluptuous over the horrific ... and, to detail a few general ones at random, a preference for creature comforts over frugal asceticism, a preference for the warmer climes over the colder, and a preference for civilisation over savagery.

Please bear in mind, however, that a preference for something is to merely prefer this over that ... and if ‘this’ is not available/ does not happen then ‘that’ does not detract one iota from the utter enjoyment and sheer appreciation of being just here, at this place in infinite space, right now, at this moment in eternal time, as this particular form which perdurable matter (mass/ energy) has taken shape as.

RESPONDENT: How do you determine what is to be done?

RICHARD: Other than necessity ... that which is pleasant/ pleasing determines.

RESPONDENT: Let us take as an example the fact that you chased a shoplifter and when you finally caught up to him told him that what he had done was against the legal laws and that he should promptly return the item shoplifted. (I, presently, am not able to find this portion on the website but do recall reading something similar hence I am unable to quote your writing directly).

RICHARD: There was only a straightforward request for the return of property not belonging to the larcenist. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘... some years ago whilst in a supermarket my wife and I had a pack stolen from the shopping trolley we were using when our backs were turned; I saw a young man disappearing along the aisle with our pack and on out through the turnstile; I went off after him at a brisk pace (...) and eventually regained the pack without a fight or even any display of intimidation. (...) He knew that he had crossed the line in regards to the legal laws and social protocol and fully expected to pay the price for his actions ... his bluff and bluster collapsed like a leaky balloon when confronted in the mall with the straightforward request for the return of property not belonging to him’.

RESPONDENT: My questions related to the incidence are these: did you not consider the possibility of him being poor and/or not able to find work despite his best efforts which could possibly justify his shoplifting?

RICHARD: I reside in a country with a long-established social security system and social welfare network ... nobody, but nobody, has to steal for their daily necessities (water, food, clothing, and shelter) in any technologically-enhanced industrialised agrarian society.

RESPONDENT: What was the thought process operating in that situation?

RICHARD: As all I wanted was the stolen property returned (the pack mainly contained library books of which reimbursement would be required if not returned by the due date) there was virtually no thought as intent determined action ... I can clearly recall admiring an ornamental garden whilst giving chase. Here (from one of the snipped sections marked by parenthesised ellipses in the above quote):

• [Richard]: ‘[I went off after him at a brisk pace], negotiated the turnstile easily, and moved out through the self-opening doors; there was an ornamental garden between me and the car-park wherein off in the distance the young man could be seen heading away; I cleared the garden in one leap – seeing each and every plant and flower in detail as I sailed over it – and soon caught up to him as, glancing over his shoulder and seeing me coming, he headed for a crowded mall to the left ...’.

*

RESPONDENT: Are you involved with any charitable organisation, any non-governmental organisation or any form of social activism?

RICHARD: Yes, I am involved on a daily basis with The Actual Freedom Trust, a non-governmental organisation set-up and funded by private citizens to promulgate and promote an actual freedom from the human condition and a virtual freedom in practice, which provides millions of words totally free of charge to anyone with access to the internet (potentially all 6.0+ billion peoples on the planet) ... words such as to make what the term social activism usually refers to pale into insignificance by comparison.

*

RESPONDENT: How do you respond when people address you as ‘sir’ in restaurants, hotels and other public places ...

RICHARD: I respond to that genteel mode of address in the manner it is given ... courteously.

RESPONDENT: ... (you don’t want people to address you ‘sir’ when they write to you on this mailing list)?

RICHARD: I accord no value to an affectation regurgitated for dramatic effect by aficionados of the teachings Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti brought into the human world.

*

RESPONDENT: Since practising the method I find that is more important to enjoy what one does than vice-versa.

RICHARD: Good ... but even better is to enjoy (and appreciate) how one is whilst one is enjoying what one does. Vis.:

• [Richard to Respondent]: ‘... one is the experiencing of what is happening ...’.

RESPONDENT: Was there a similar thought after you became actually free?

RICHARD: No ... enjoyment (and appreciation) is involuntary here in this actual world.

Continued on General Correspondence Page 13: No. 03

Continued on Mailing List ‘D’: No. 8