Richard’s Correspondence

With Correspondent No. 93

June 21 2005

RESPONDENT: Richard, would you say that it takes quite a bit of effort and determination to follow through in asking the question to it’s conclusion?

RICHARD: I do say it takes some doing to start off with yet, with application and diligence and patience and perseverance, one soon gets the knack of it and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and, as the slightest diminishment of such felicity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way, it is remarkably simple in practice ... and thus easy.

Furthermore, it is fun to find out what makes one ‘tick’.

RESPONDENT: I find it takes a lot of effort to resist being pulled into negative imaginary scenarios. It seems to be easier to just go with them, get sucked into negativity, rant inside for quite some time, then eventually let it pass. Of course, I’ve wasted all of that time in an imaginary story line rather than enjoying the only moment I have to be alive. Would say it is similar to the movie ‘The Matrix’, in that all imaginary memory based knowledge seems to want to keep us locked in it’s grid?

RICHARD: As I have not seen that movie (I rarely, if ever, watch/read science fiction) I have nothing to say other than I accessed a website, when asked about it earlier this year, and gained the impression of it being a modern-day variation on an epical dystopic-exile/ exilic-restoration theme of yore.

As to the essence of your query – ‘all imaginary memory based knowledge seems to want to keep us locked in its grid’ – it is pertinent to add that the entire real-world (both the ‘inner’ world and its ‘outer’ world) is itself imaginary and any solution/salvation or restoration/redemption to be found therein, being an intuitional functioning of that ‘grid’, is but a delusion born out of an illusion.

RESPONDENT: Would you say it takes a lot of effort?

RICHARD: No ... sincerity is the key to an unlocking of effortlessness.

July 07 2005

RICHARD: (...) will/volition (with both ego and soul/spirit extinct) is nothing more complicated than intent/determination.

RESPONDENT: Who has this ‘intent/volition’? (a sincere question).

RICHARD: Ha ... have your other queries not been sincere, then?

Put succinctly: it is this flesh and blood body being apperceptively aware that generates intent, and thus volition, or will ... here is how I have described it previously:

• [Richard]: ‘The ego – or even the soul as pure spirit – is not to be confused with will. The bodily needs are what motivates will – and will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function ... not an identity. Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams through the bodily senses. Will is not a ‘thing’, a subjectively substantial passionate ‘object’, like the identity is. Will, freed of the encumbrance of the ego and soul – which are born out of instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire – can operate smoothly, with actual sagacity. The operation of this freed will is called intelligence. This intelligence is the body’s native intelligence ... and has naught to do with any disembodied ‘Intelligence behind the Universe’. It is a joy to be me going about my business with freed-will in this wonderful physical world’. (page 76, Article 10: ‘I Am Not An Identity ... I Am Me’ from ‘Richard’s Journal’; Second Edition ©2004 The Actual Freedom Trust).

Also, and of related interest, there is this:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘You think you have free will?
• [Richard]: ‘No.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘What determines your actions?
• [Richard]: ‘The situation and the circumstances in the world of people, things and events.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Your thoughts – right?
• [Richard]: ‘Not necessarily ... mostly ‘automatic pilot’ operates via habituation. Something new to experience requires thought ... reflecting, comparing, evaluating, considering and then implementing. Altogether a rather delightful episodic event.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Do you control your thoughts?
• [Richard]: ‘This brain thinks thoughts perfectly without any ‘I’ or ‘me’ in there stuffing things up.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Where do they come from?
• [Richard]: ‘Are not thoughts neuronal activity betwixt the synapses? An electro-chemical process? As such they come from the calorific energy of foodstuffs plus oxygen from the air breathed.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Can you CREATE thoughts?
• [Richard]: ‘This brain thinks thoughts all of its own accord ... easily, simply and fluently. It is altogether a marvellous occurrence’.

Footnotes:

(1.)I do say it takes some doing to start off with:

• [Richard]: ‘It takes some doing to start off with, but as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it becomes automatic to have this question running as an on-going thing (as a non-verbal attitude towards life ... a wordless approach each moment again) because it delivers the goods right here and now ... not off into some indeterminate future’.

(2.)it is remarkably simple in practice:

• [Richard]: ‘It is really very, very simple (which is possibly why it has never been discovered before this): one felt good previously; one is not feeling good now; something happened to one to end that felicitous feeling; one finds out what happened; one sees how silly that is (no matter what it was); one is once more feeling good’.

(3.)it becomes automatic to have this question running:

• [Richard]: ‘It is a question, not a phrase to be memorised and repeated slogan-like (or as if chanting a mantra for instance), and it soon becomes a non-verbal attitude to life ... a wordless approach each moment again whereupon one cannot be anything else but aware of one’s every instinctual impulse/affective feeling, and thus self-centred thought, as it is happening’.

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The Third Alternative

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Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

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