Actual Freedom – Selected Correspondence by Topic

Re: important correction

RESPONDENT: On the last day, we talked a about pride.

RICHARD: G’day No. 39, On the last day we talked about pride in the context of your [quote] ‘... pride (at progressing nicely) ...’ [endquote] words from your Day 15 post (on Aug 2, 2013, in #15023) to this forum.

I suggested it would be far more fruitful to be pleased, about ‘progressing nicely’, than proud as the obverse of pride is being humble (i.e., humility is but pride standing on its head).

Words such as humiliate, humiliative, and so on, are derived from the same etymological roots as the words humble, humility, and so forth, stem from.

Vis.:

• humble (adj.): 1. marked by meekness or modesty in behaviour, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful; 2. showing deferential or submissive respect; 3. low in rank, quality, or station; unpretentious or lowly;
(tr.v.): humbled, humbling, humbles: 1. to curtail or destroy the pride of; humiliate; 2. to cause to be meek or modest in spirit; 3. to give a lower condition or station to; abase;
(adj.): humbled, humbler, humblest, humbling; (n.): humbleness, humbler; (adv.): humbly, humblingly;
synonyms: degrade, abase, debase, demean, humiliate; demote, break, bust, downgrade, reduce. [Middle English, fr. Old French, from Latin humilis, ‘low, lowly’, fr. humus, ‘ground’; Indo-European roots: dhghem-]. (American Heritage Dictionary).

• humility (n.): the quality or condition of being humble. [Middle English humilite, from Old French, from Late Latin humilitâs, fr. humilis, ‘low, lowly’, fr. humus, ‘ground’]. (American Heritage Dictionary).

• humiliate, humiliates, humiliated, humiliating (tr. v.): to lower the pride, dignity, or self-respect of; (adj.): humiliative, humiliatory; (adv.): humiliatingly; (n.): humiliation, humiliator. [fr. Late Latin humiliâre, humiliât-, ‘to humble’, fr. humilis, ‘humble’, fr. humus, ‘ground’]. (American Heritage Dictionary).

RESPONDENT: We had a useful theological and semantic discussion ...

RICHARD: The semantic part of the discussion pertained to you saying the opposite of pride was embarrassment – whereupon I pointed out that being humble (aka humility) is the more usual antonym – but given that humiliation and embarrassment are more or less synonymous it required what you characterise as a theological discussion to tease out differing connotations ... to wit: the difference betwixt shame and guilt.

As a broad generalisation the feeling of shame (as in ignominy, disgrace, mortification, &c.) is more a public affair than private – whereas the feeling of guilt is more a private matter than public – and features mostly in eastern cultures (quite prominently, for instance, in China and Japan) rather than in western cultures where the feeling of guilt, being private, is conducive to the west’s emphasis on individuality over familiality (i.e., ‘the quality of being familial’ where familial means ‘of or relating to family’) ... which is particularly obvious in Christian-based societies such as inhabit what is known as the Anglosphere.

RESPONDENT: ... but it his [Richard’s] point about patting yourself on the back which is most pertinent here.

RICHARD: The following is a quote which will serve to illustrate just what it is you are referring to.

Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: I can’t thank you enough for reiterating how to use HAIETMOBA?. I have read it fifty times, but this time it clicked. There is something to watch out for, which is the feeling of upset. I am just used to living with my upsetting feelings by ignoring them or repressing them, because I shouldn’t get upset ... you know? ... it’s not right to be upset, etc. So to go looking for the incident like you suggest wasn’t working because ... I’m always upset! due to repressing or analysing why I shouldn’t have the bad feeling. I mean, where would I start? When I saw this about myself I was happy and from there I was able to locate an upsetting incident that day.
• [Richard]: Good ... and once one gets the knack of it (it does take diligence and application and patience and perseverance in the beginning) it all becomes such fun to find out, each moment again, how one ticks.
One thing I did, way back when I started doing that method, was to make sure I would never, ever, tell myself off for slipping back into the old ways – after all ‘I am only human’ and it is bound to happen from time-to-time – and instead I would pat myself on the back for being astute enough to notice that I had slipped back and thus get on with the business of being happy and harmless again ... and feeling good about myself for being able to do so.
It is important to be friends with oneself – only I get to live with myself twenty four hours of the day (other people can and do move away) – and if I am at war with myself, disciplining myself, telling myself off, I am alienating the only person who can truly help me in all this.
In short: be nice to yourself, not nasty ... there are already enough people doing that anyway. (Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 50, 11 October 2003).

RESPONDENT: He [Richard] said that feeling beings inner dialogue is quite self-critical.

RICHARD: The following is a quote which will serve to illustrate just what it is you are referring to.

Vis.:

• [Rick]: I feel more at ease with life, yes.
• [Richard]: I have just now re-read our only other exchange (five months ago) wherein, regarding the application of the actualism method, you reported [quote] ‘it’s having some success in that it’s helping me cope’ [endquote] and what immediately springs to mind is that [quote] ‘feeling more at ease with life’ [endquote] is streets ahead of merely being helped to cope.
And I am not just ‘talking you up’ as experience has shown that, while peoples are quite ready to self-criticise and bemoan their fate, they are less likely to as readily self-congratulate and applaud their progression out of same.
Try patting yourself on the back for each and every success ... as a boost to confidence a well-deserved accolade is a tonic like no other. (Actual Freedom Mailing List, Rick, 30 September 2005).

The following (quite lengthy) quote is particularly informative vis-a-vis both this and related issues.

Vis.:

R: Do you see that you do not need to? Catch yourself doing it: ‘Why am I going through it again. I already know this.’ This is also fun. To watch how your thought process works.

Q: And notice how often you put yourself down.

R: Tell yourself off.

Q(1): For thinking it!

R: One discovers that the way one tells oneself off; if one were to talk to another person like that – a friend – one would not have any friends left. You have to live with yourself twenty four hours a day; if you are talking to yourself in such a way that you are not a good friend to yourself, then what are you doing? If I were to talk like that to you, be sharp with you, you would have nothing to do with me. Are you not sharp upon yourself?

Q(1): I am very sharp upon myself.

R: It is a good thing to become friends with yourself, to decide not to tell yourself off any more: ‘Okay, I will make mistakes from time to time, because I am still human, but if I ‘goof-up’ I will not exacerbate the situation by imposing a condemnation upon myself.’ One always has another chance, another moment in which to do better, to make it work this time. It is always a quick thought, a swift reproach: ‘Oh, you fool!’ or ‘You shouldn’t do that!’ or ‘How stupid!’

Q: Or you’re not good enough: ‘You should know better than that!’

R: It is good to cease doing that because only you live with yourself for the twenty four hours of the day. Everybody else comes and goes, but you remain, ever constant ... for the rest of your life. I can not stress enough how important it is for you to be your own best friend. For then you get to know yourself – you are no longer against yourself. You can discover things about your own make-up: ‘Oh, isn’t that interesting’ or ‘I like that one’ or ‘I didn’t know I was carrying that’ or ‘I’m glad that one is out of the way’. Sometimes, of course, something can come back, three days, three weeks or three months later: ‘Goodness me, I thought I had eliminated that one’. See how vital it is that you are your own best ‘buddy’? You say: ‘Well, I thought I had dealt with that but never mind, I have another moment here, another chance’. This way you work with yourself, instead of in opposition. It is very important.

And it is such good fun! Then, everything you do in your daily life, moment to moment, is taking advantage of multiple opportunities. Every moment again is an occasion to improve your lot ... when you are interacting with someone, either face to face or on the telephone ... or a back-ache: ‘Oh god, how terrible!’ ... another opportunity. It is bad enough to feel pain, why make it worse by adding an emotional suffering like ‘I feel terrible’? To feel terrible, emotionally, on top of the physical pain is simply silly when it is possible to disentagle oneself, emotionally, and still feel good about being alive, about being here. This is being sensible, is it not? To feel good, if not happy, all the time?

Q: And top of that: ‘I deserve it, too’. You know, god punishes immediately! ‘It’s my own fault’ or ‘I shouldn’t have done that’.

Q(2): Or conformity: ‘If everyone else suffers, why shouldn’t I too?’

R: This is a lot easier than that new-age one about not being judgemental. ‘I shouldn’t be judgemental!’ or ‘I’m always evaluating, judging everything and everyone’. This is a much more gentle way of being with oneself. Be kind to yourself – one needs all the help one can get and who is the best person to help you if not you yourself? Who else is going to do it? Only you can live your life, nobody else can do the living of it for you. It is really good to become friendly with yourself, to get to know yourself, to enjoy yourself ... and for goodness sake, stop berating yourself!

About being judgemental: It is only a belief – a New-age belief resurrected from the old scriptural injunction: ‘Judge not that ye be judged thyself’. What is wrong with appraising a situation or person or an event? One can not live without evaluating, so the injunction merely makes one feel guilty. Nobody lives according to it anyway – it is an unliveable bit of nonsensical doctrine that frankly does not make sense.

Q(1): It’s funny about how I handle this judging business ... what follows is that I can’t do it in any practical way.

R: It is a re-run of that hoary one of being tolerant ... another New-age belief is: ‘Be accepting’. What balderdash! Does anyone accept a murderer? A rapist? A pederast? A traitor? A thief? Nobody does these things, they simply mouth regurgitated pap and fondly think themselves to be wise and righteous people. These commandments just have not worked – they have had thousands of years to demonstrate their efficacy at producing peace on earth and they have failed miserably. Most of the New-age stuff is a re-hash of the old ‘tried and true’, which is, actually, ‘the tried and failed’.

Q: When someone tells you not to be judgemental, they actually mean: ‘Your opinion doesn’t count’. Their own opinion is, of course, valid – but you are not to question it. It is a clever way of gagging you.

R: One woman accused me, years ago, of being judgemental. I said: ‘Of course I am, I do not hold that belief.’ I am neither a New-age aficionado nor a Christian so I can be as judgemental as all get-out ... not that I use the word, personally. Try ‘appraisal’; that will get you away from the moralistic overtones. One does an appraisal of a person, a thing or an event: ‘That’s useful; that’s not. That is silly; that is sensible’. Of course one does this. How on earth can one conduct one’s affairs without appraising, without reviewing, in some way?

It is helpful to rid oneself of the concept of ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ and utilise ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’. You will be a lot better off. For example: It is silly to be unhappy, it is sensible to be happy.

Q(1): It’s using the same word for ‘Good and Bad’ and ‘Right and Wrong’.

R: Not at all. It is not moralistic; it is about the workability of something, the usefulness of whatever it is. I am talking about a very practical thing: It is sensible to be happy; it is silly to be unhappy. It is silly to feel rotten; it is sensible to feel well. You see, it is not self-righteous at all – it is a matter-of fact appraisal.

Q(1): No, I wouldn’t use moralistic for that – about being happy.

R: Nor for anything. Please, do not use ‘silly’ and ‘sensible’ as a substitute for moralistic values ... that would defeat the purpose. It is a practical, everyday, common-sense thing: ‘How am I feeling at this moment?’ or ‘Am I feeling good?’ or ‘Am I feeling bad?’ ... ‘Oh that’s silly, I’ll do something about myself until I feel good’. Simply, it is sensible to feel good. This is my moment of being alive – I am not alive five minutes ago, nor am I alive five minutes ahead. This is my only moment of being here. How am I experiencing this moment? If I am not experiencing it well now, when will I? It will be a ‘now’ moment when I do, so why not make this ‘now’ moment ... this one that is happening right now. Why waste it by feeling rotten? Why not enjoy it?

It works! I am not merely talking theory, this is what I did back in ‘81. I have not missed a moment for sixteen years ... it is always this moment. What a misspent life, to waste each moment waiting for a future happiness ... to sit around feeling rotten, berating oneself, feeling guilty, and so on. (Audiotaped Dialogues, Silly or Sensible)

RESPONDENT: So it is a very good idea to pat yourself on the back whenever it will promote felicity or get you feeling excellent so you can move on to wide eyed wonder.

RICHARD: No, what is a very good idea (to use your phrasing) is to pat yourself on the back whenever you succeed in finding out just what it is which is preventing this moment of being alive – the only moment you are ever actually alive – from being lived at its optimum.

In doing so you get to find out how you operate and function (just what it is that makes you ‘tick’ as it were) each moment again.

RESPONDENT: So if you are a salesman and just made a big sale, pat yourself on the back with the aim of increasing your current happiness so you can on move to feeling excellent and then to wide eyed wonder.

RICHARD: No, I neither said that nor anything of that nature (I am clearly talking of success, no matter how slight it may be, regarding consciousness and not in regards to materialistic success).

RESPONDENT: That is what I took from his comments though I have a history of not understanding his words all that well.

RICHARD: This is as good an opportunity as any to drive home the point I made to [No. 25], on May 25th (in #13582), inasmuch the words I spoke to you were, essentially, a verbal reiteration of what is already freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust website.

Vis.:

#13582
From: richard.actualfreedom
Date: Sat May 25, 2013 11:51 am
Subject: Re: Is Actualism Safe?

• [Respondent No. 25]: Due to my last visit with you and Vineeto, many confusions have been cleared up ...
• [Richard]: The way in which those ‘many confusions’ were cleared up was, essentially, by verbal reiteration of what is already freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust website. [...].

One of the advantages the printed or digitalised word has over the spoken word is that it can be revisited again and again until comprehension is complete ... something not understood, or misconstrued, the first time around can always be examined and re-examined at a later convenience.

RESPONDENT: In trying to research the site, I find that Peter has a chapter on pride in which he admonishes the feeling.

RICHARD: Maybe, just maybe, feeling-being ‘Peter’ took note of what Richard had to say about pride and examined it for ‘himself’ so as to ascertain whether it be true or not, eh?

RESPONDENT: Yet Richard highly recommends ‘patting yourself on the back.’

RICHARD: What Richard highly recommends is being pleased (aka ‘patting oneself on the back’) whenever you succeed in finding out just what it is which is preventing this moment of being alive – the only moment you are ever actually alive – from being lived at its optimum.

RESPONDENT: This isn’t a contradiction.

RICHARD: Oh, yes it is.

RESPONDENT: They both agree.

RICHARD: They both agree about being pleased (aka ‘patting oneself on the back’) – not about feeling proud – at success, no matter how slight it may be, regarding consciousness.

RESPONDENT: In fact, Peter’s last words to me were ‘pat yourself on the back once in a while.’

RICHARD: Aye, but those last words of his were not in regards to feeling proud.

RESPONDENT: So ferreting out how the two ideas do not contradict each other is an excellent spot to learn more about the site.

RICHARD: In which case I will leave you with the following quote to mull over as it is but one example of what I have to say about pride (and its companion-in-arms humility).

Vis.:

• [Richard]: (...). Personally I have no humility whatsoever and, of course, neither am I proud. In order to be free of the Human Condition one needs to see the place pride and humility plays in one’s life. ‘I’ am proud of ‘my’ major achievement – which is maintaining ‘myself’ as an identity – and ‘I’ will do anything but relinquish ‘my’ grip on this flesh-and-blood body ... including humbling ‘myself’ before some God in order to ameliorate the pernicious effects of pride. However, humility is merely the antidote to pride ... and they feed off each other, continuously.
For example, one cannot but feel proud of one’s accomplishment of self-abasing humility ... it is in the nature of the entity to do so. A humbled self is still a self, nonetheless, leaving one proud of one’s performance. When one realises how silly all this is; when one sees that pride and humility are standing in the way of freedom from all self-centred activity, something astounding occurs. The opposites vanish. I am simply here where I have always been ... and pride, with its companion in arms, humility, has disappeared along with all the other feelings.
I am free to be here now in the world as-it-is. Unadorned and unencumbered, I can stand on my own two feet, owing allegiance to no-one. (Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 4, 9 January 1999).

Regards, Richard.

RESPONDENT: But I don’t understand what makes Richard so confident that his method will work. The statement ‘I am under no illusion that global peace and tranquillity will eventuate before I am on my death-bed; I do not suffer from the delusion that I can effect a sweeping change to the lot of all human beings’ looks like another messianic chore. On a re-thought, I take back this allegation. This may be genuine humility.

RICHARD: All humility is nothing but the ego being very, very clever ... it is but a product of a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity called ego. One of the chief attributes of a freedom from a ‘self’ or a ‘Self’ and from believing in a ‘God’ and a ‘Greater Reality’, is a completeness ... an absence of the need to control a wayward ‘I’ with moralistic injunctions. Personally I have no humility whatsoever and, of course, neither am I proud. In order to be free of the Human Condition one needs to see the place pride and humility plays in one’s life. ‘I’ am proud of ‘my’ major achievement – which is maintaining ‘myself’ as an identity – and ‘I’ will do anything but relinquish ‘my’ grip on this flesh-and-blood body ... including humbling ‘myself’ before some God in order to ameliorate the pernicious effects of pride. However, humility is merely the antidote to pride ... and they feed off each other, continuously. For example, one cannot but feel proud of one’s accomplishment of self-abasing humility ... it is in the nature of the entity to do so. A humbled self is still a self, nonetheless, leaving one proud of one’s performance. When one realises how silly all this is; when one sees that pride and humility are standing in the way of freedom from all self-centred activity, something astounding occurs. The opposites vanish. I am simply here where I have always been ... and pride, with its companion in arms, humility, has disappeared along with all the other feelings. I am free to be here now in the world as-it-is. Unadorned and unencumbered, I can stand on my own two feet, owing allegiance to no-one.

RESPONDENT: To me humility is a virtue and proud is not.

RICHARD: Humility is merely the antidote to pride ... you cannot have one without the other. Where is the need to be humble unless you are first proud? Therefore, being humble is merely pride standing on its head ... and one is proud of being virtuous.

RESPONDENT: I understand what you say. Humility is definitely a form of pride. But till I can give up both pride and humility, I will rather stick with humility.

RICHARD: Why?

RESPONDENT: But I have absolutely no problem if you are proud of your achievement.

RICHARD: Yet I have already written (above) that I have neither pride nor humility. Besides, I can freely say that I, as I am today, did nothing to become free of the Human Condition. It was ‘I’ that did all the work ... ‘I’ self-immolated. And I am very pleased that ‘I’ did that. I am not proud because I did nothing to earn commendation ... it was ‘I’ that made this possible.

RESPONDENT: Sorry for confusing myself. I thought, you told that you are proud of your achievements, but I was wrong.

RICHARD: I made such a fool of myself for eleven years that I could not have any pride even if I wanted too!

RESPONDENT: Also Richard, something about the wording of your following statement disconnects my comprehension: ‘it is ‘I’ who stands in the way ... pride and modesty are but attributes of ‘me’’. So ‘me’s’ have ‘but’ attributes (and its the ‘but’ that also stumps me, not only the I’s and me’s and ‘I’s’ do not – and – are not an attribute either?

RICHARD: I could also have said ‘aspects’ instead of ‘attributes’ ... meaning they are but indications, signs, clues, that there is an ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ in there trying to divest itself of some undesirable aspects of itself. It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings such as pride and modesty – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ (hence my comment about ‘false modesty’ as it is analogous to ‘spiritual humility’).

‘I’ and/or ‘me’, being charged by blind nature to survive at any cost, thus stays in existence to wreak its havoc once more

KONRAD: Nobody who thinks that he has accomplished something, whether this is factual or not, is willing to be taught. This is part and parcel of the pride that goes with this. If you want to talk with them, you must at least acknowledge what they have if they have something. But in the next step you must be careful, and prevent them for jumping all over you. For your acknowledging that what they have can be taken as proof that they have found a willing victim who now can become their student, and in this way satisfy their desire to be considered superior.

RICHARD: As there is neither pride nor humility operating inside this body, none of the above affects me in the least. All that is your experience of life, not mine.

RESPONDENT No. 21: There is a place in the bible where the world is described as a globe. If I find it, I will post it. Maybe someone knows it. I believe it is in Isaiah if I remember correctly. It is definitely in there (...) Here it is, written between 745 and 680 B. C. Isaiah 40:22: ‘It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in’.

RICHARD: Hmm ... a circle is hardly a globe, now is it? ...<SNIP> ... Do you really want to get into a discussion about the veracity of ‘God’s Word’?

RESPONDENT: Now Richard, why do you have to confuse No. 21 with the facts? He’s fixin’ to sit on the right hand of God and you’re going to mess him up big time!

RICHARD: I think not. For most, seeing a fact means betraying one’s belief ... thus one is rendered incapable of seeing it. Then the biggest problem – even after overcoming such loyalty – is one’s intellectual pride ... one has to come to terms with having been silly for all of one’s life. Usually, believers have become so accustomed to being spiritually humble that they are not at all prepared for the genuine humility engendered ... it is too humiliating.

Besides which, discerning the difference between the truth and the fact eludes most people anyway.

RICHARD: If all human beings took Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s ‘non-authoritarian’ advice about rejecting authority – yet all the while he gave firm instructions about ‘interpreting’ that needs must leave the power-backed ‘Teachings’ to be considered inviolate – and did not share their discoveries, we would all still be living in a cave, dressed in animal skins, and gnawing on a raw brontosaurus bone.

RESPONDENT: You seem to want others to debunk Mr. Jiddu K’s teachings for YOUR teachings.

RICHARD: Not everyone is so vain as to humbly call their words to one’s fellow human beings ‘Teachings’ ... having no pride or humility whatsoever I do not presume to call my writing ‘Teachings’.

RESPONDENT: No. You just call yourself an ‘authority’ who’s expertise ‘sits nicely with him’. And you question K’s vanity? LOL.

RICHARD: Yes indeed I do ... false modesty plays no part in my life. If I know something ... I say so. I am straight-forward ... up-front and honest.

RESPONDENT: Now let’s be honest. The man did not say HE was an authority.

RICHARD: Indeed he did not ... he dissimulated.

RESPONDENT: He referred to his works as teachings.

RICHARD: Yea verily ... thus the ‘teachings’ are the authority. This way he takes no responsibility for what he says ... it comes from that ‘supreme intelligence’ that is ‘neither yours nor mine’. He is ‘merely a pointer’. This has all been done before ... are you familiar with the phrase: ‘I am but a finger pointing to the moon ... look at what I am pointing to and not the finger’? This duck-shoving of amenability is not for me ... I stand behind what I say.

RICHARD: Given that what one is, fundamentally, is a fearful and aggressive yet nurturing and desiring self it is no wonder that there is a ‘drive to be other than what is’. Given that what one is creates a grim and glum ‘reality’ that is the current ‘what is’ for 6.0 billion peoples ... then ‘what is’ sucks.

RESPONDENT: I think I understand. It is a crazy and senseless life to be lived ... and I’m quite stupid.

RICHARD: No, not ‘stupid’ ... ‘stupefied’. Self-castigation only makes one ripe for humility ... and humility is but pride standing on its head. How can one have dignity when one is humiliating oneself? How will this bring about clarity?

RESPONDENT: And this possibility of a possible change is attributed to an imaginary centred entity.

RICHARD: Aye ... and, as the ‘imaginary centred entity’ has the backing of the full range of instinctually-generated passions (with their concomitant hormones) to keep itself intact, then any change so far in human history has been but a modification of what is.

RESPONDENT: Human history ... yes, it’s collective madness.

RICHARD: By ‘human history’ I also include those elitists ... the 0.00001 of the population.

RICHARD: If one is going to accept the status-quo for what it is and ‘make the best of a bad situation’ then such concentrated and focussed effort as described above would probably be the better way to go. However, the way freedom works, and the basic theory/ philosophy to formalise it, is this simple:

Back when I used to be able to visualise, what would happen is that it is all mapped out, planned in advance, and all that was left was a ‘colouring-in-by-numbers’ style of painting and/or drawing and/or whatever. All the creativity was confined to mental-emotional imagery department – a dream-like fantasy – which rarely, if ever, translated into pen and paper or paint and canvas ... with the resultant frustration in being unable to manifest the vision into actuality. The main reason was that the mental picture was not constrained by the physical medium and thus compromises inevitably creep in, even early in the piece. One is then left with trying to force actuality into fitting the fancy ... with less than desirable results. What I discovered, when the ‘painting painted itself’, was that actuality ruled the roost, as it were, and magically manifested perfection ... such as to leave me, as I remarked (further above) standing in amazement and wonder, marvelling at this magical creativity.

Modesty – especially false modesty – disappeared along with pride ... ‘I’ was not doing this.

I saw and understood that we humans were trying to make life fit our petty demands; our pathetic dreams; our desperate schemes ... and who am ‘I’ to know better than this infinite, eternal and perpetual universe how to do it. Because all the while, perfection was abounding all about ... magically unfolding, each moment again, if only one would give oneself permission to ‘let go the controls’ and allow it all to happen of its own accord. Again, none of this is to negate the very essential patiently acquired skills and expertise ... otherwise one is as a leaf blowing in the wind (‘think not of the morrow’ and all that nonsense). Initially I described it as ‘being like a child again but with adult sensibilities’. Of course, time would show me that being ‘child-like’ is not it ... but that was ‘my’ beginning explanation back then when seeking to understand.

Back in 1980 ‘I’ looked at the stars one night and temporarily came to my senses: there are galaxies exploding/imploding (or whatever) all throughout the physical infinitude where an immeasurable quantity of matter is perpetually arranging and rearranging itself in endless varieties of form all over the boundless reaches of infinite space throughout the limitless extent of eternal time and ‘I’ – puny, pathetic ‘I’ in an ant-like-in-comparison and very vulnerable 6’2’’ flesh and blood body – disapprove of all this? That is, ‘I’ call all this a ‘sick joke’, or whatever depreciative assessment? And further: so what if ‘I’ were to do an about-face and graciously approve? What difference would that make to the universe?

Zilch.

Ergo: ‘I’, with all my abysmal opinions, theories, concepts, values, principles, judgements and so on, am not required at all ... ‘I’ am a supernumerary. ‘I’ am redundant; ‘I’ can retire; fold ‘my’ hand; pack in the game, die, dissolve, disappear, disintegrate, depart, vamoose, vanish – whatever – and life would manage quite well, thank you, without ‘me’ ... a whole lot better, in fact, as ‘I’ am holding up the works from functioning smoothly ..

‘I’ am not needed ... ‘my’ services are no longer required.

RESPONDENT: This is most interesting, I have always told anyone who asks me ‘how did I do that’ that I am not doing it, it is as much a mystery to me as them.

RICHARD: Again this explanation is at odds with the question you ‘find most pressing’ in your initial E-Mail. Am I to take it that you no longer ‘graphically visualise mental concepts and visually recall data relevant to what [you] wish to convey’?

If so, why is it still ‘as much a mystery to [you] as them’?

RESPONDENT: In fact pride or modesty only hinders free flowing creativity.

It is ‘I’ who stands in the way ... pride and modesty are but attributes of ‘me’.

RICHARD: The only time when self-congratulatory mutual back-slapping is experientially deserved there is no ‘the thinker’ extant to take credit.

RESPONDENT: Where there is self-congratulatory back-slapping, there is duality, the framework of time is back again.

RICHARD: As the ‘self-congratulatory mutual back-slapping’ being discussed (above) is applicable only to where it is experientially deserved – to where there is no ‘the thinker’ extant – there is, of course, no duality.

RESPONDENT: Hmm ... so being that does not exist is proud ...

RICHARD: If I may interject? This is a nonsensical statement because something that does not exist cannot be – or say – anything (let alone be ‘proud’). It is simply absurd ... and an absurd premise will give a meaningless conclusion any day of the week.

RESPONDENT: [so being that does not exist is proud] of the being that did once exist because it choose to end its existence?

RICHARD: Except that I never said ‘proud’ ... in the remainder of the post, which you snipped off, I wrote that I am pleased and full of admiration for the audacity of that ‘being’ who used to inhabit this body (for daring to do what Those With Feet Of Clay never do). And I will likewise salute anyone – anyone at all – who is intrepid enough to face the opprobrium of their peers and likewise disappear ... thus further paving the way for the ingress of a global peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: Sounds a bit like riding a Bentley wondering how people can party while there is suffering in the world.

RICHARD: As this entire scenario is your invention I guess you can make it ‘sound a bit like’ whatever you want it too. Speaking personally, I do not own any car at all – I ceased using a private gas-guzzler twenty-odd years ago – and enjoy a pleasant stroll to the village centre instead. And if whilst ambling along I were to hazard a guess as to the state of their mind, I would probably consider that the reason why they do ‘party while there is suffering in the world’ is because you and your ilk sagely tell them, for just one example, that the root cause of fear is separation from ‘the otherness’. Which is just what Christianity does, to instance but one religion, who also say that the root cause of all human suffering is separation from God.

With such a bizarre proposal trotted out as wisdom it is no wonder that they party!

RESPONDENT: The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second.

RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings.

RESPONDENT: Many feelings as shame are triggered off by thought when remembering past lived experiences stored as memory and the thinker lives them anew, giving rise to the feeling of shame anew, so that the rising of the sensation of discomfort called ‘shame’ seems to be just a process dependent of the thinker and of memory. The instinctive bodily sensation named ‘shame’ seems to be a natural reaction when the thinker is making a situation of insecurity through his interpretations. In this way, it seems that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations, but also there’s not the rising of the instinctive discomfort named as ‘shame’ without the action of the thinker.

RICHARD: Indeed it is so that ‘thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations’ if by ‘bodily sensations’ you mean bodily feelings (affective feelings) ... and there is no ‘natural reaction’ called ‘shame’. Shame, and all its variations (such as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy,) are cultivated feelings, socialised feelings, cultural feelings.

Speaking personally, I have no shame whatsoever (hence no pride nor its antidotal humility).

RESPONDENT: So that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of bodily sensations but the thinker is what can trigger off them, what can create a response of fear or sorrow when it is indeed unnecessary.

RICHARD: It is emotional memory ... a non-verbal memory located in what is popularly called the ‘lizard brain’ or ‘reptilian brain’ at the top of the brain-stem/ base of the skull.

RESPONDENT: This points me that the instinctive bodily responses and sensations can exists by themselves without a so called ‘feeler’ at their root, they are an essence of the body, they seem to be natural and it is not necessary to extinct them, it seems only necessary to extinct the thinker, who makes false interpretations of reality and creates unnecessary situations of insecurity and threat, triggering off then these prior existing bodily responses and sensations. Do you consider the above correct? If not, why?

RICHARD: No, because they not only ‘seem to be natural’ ... they are indeed natural. It is natural to feel fear and aggression and nature and desire ... these feelings are blind nature’s instinctual survival passions. However, now that a thinking, reflective brain has developed sensible thought, thoughts and thinking these instinctual survival passions can be safely eliminated.

In fact, what was once essential for survival is nowadays the biggest threat to survival.

*

RESPONDENT: By bodily sensations I don’t mean affective feelings, I mean bodily physical responses of discomfort to a threat (rubor, tachycardia, sweating ...). When the threat is to our self image then, this physical discomfort associated to a thinking process on self image, is named ‘shame’. The threat is an illusory thinking process but it is a threat, so that the bodily physical response also arises. The thinker seems to be again the problem, making an illusory self image and later a threat to this self image, triggering a natural physical response to the illusory threat, and naming all it as ‘shame’.

RICHARD: I will put it this way: the ‘natural responses’ (such as the heart pumping furiously; the palms sweaty; the face ruddy; knuckles gripped; body tensed and so on) never occur where the instinctual passions are not.