# Actual Freedom – Definitions

# Definitions ## Tit-for-Tat Tit-for-Tat: Tit-for-Tat (informal): a tit-for-tat action is something bad one does to someone in retaliation for some bad thing they did (always before noun); [e.g.]: ‘Six of the victims died in tit-for-tat attacks’. ~ (Cambridge Idioms Dictionary Reference: RICHARD: (...). In biblical terms tit-for-tat is equivalent to the aggressive Old Testament ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth’ (as contrasted to the pacifistic New Testament ‘turn the other cheek’ injunction). When the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body in 1981 took ‘his’ first steps on what has become known as the wide and wondrous path (to an actual freedom from the human condition/ from identity in toto) ‘he’ quickly ascertained that whilst ‘he’ could not stop people giving offence and/or being offensive what ‘he’ could stop was taking offence and/or being retributively offensive as ‘he’ knew of the tit-for-tat nature of the ever-recurring wars between neighbouring tribes in the New Guinea Highlands (what they called ‘pay-back’ warfare) which stretched back millennia in the past such that the specific nature of initial offence was lost forever in the mists of time. What ‘he’ also knew of was the archetypal ‘fightin’ & feudin’ hillbillies’ of North American myth and legend – who also typically knew not of what had started it all back whenever – and the break-up of the modern nation of Yugoslavia is another example of inherited ancestral scores being settled. Obviously, someone had to ‘break the chain’ of such never-ending tit-for-tat feuding – else the term ‘mature adult’ was bereft of meaning – and ‘he’ could see that only unilateral action would do the trick. Accordingly, *’he’ conceived of being akin to a sponge* – absorbing all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights (no knee-jerk reactionary rudeness; no retaliatory retorts; no keeping score, even, of past incidences) – *and duly ‘wringing it out’, if necessary, from time-to-time* were ‘he’ ever to become too full to absorb any more (which latter ploy was, curiously enough, never necessary). [emphases added by Rick]. And it worked! A spelled-out example of this unilateral course of action is to be found in Message № 12901. (Richard, List D, No. 33, 13 January 2013). It starts thusly: • [Richard]: ‘And then, in the late-afternoon of an otherwise typical summer’s day, in 1981, a six-foot-two man was standing in the kitchen of his ex-farmhouse being soundly berated, as was also typical, by his four-foot-eleven wife ...’. (Richard, List D, Srid, 14 January 2016). RICK: Do you by chance recall the specific way in which ‘he’ conceived to ‘wring out’ all that offense being absorbed? RICHARD: G’day Rick, My usage of the word ‘conceived’ in the above ‘tit-for-tat’ passage – specifically, in that illustrative paragraph (‘illustrative’ as per its ‘being akin to...’ wording) recalling how ‘not taking offence’ was envisioned by the identity in residence circa 1981 – is predicated upon what is conveyed by the term ‘Conceptual Art’. Viz.: • conceptual art (n.): art that is intended to convey an idea or concept to the perceiver and need not involve the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or sculpture. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). • conceptual art (n.): art in which the idea or concept presented by the artist is considered more important than the finished product, if any such exists. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary). Thus the short answer to your query is that the resident identity (who was successfully making a living as a practising artist at that time) viewed it as a figurative ‘wringing it out’ which, as already remarked upon parenthetically, turned out to be not necessary anyway. As the above passage of mine generated more than a few posts it may be helpful to expand somewhat upon what that feeling-being was involved in (when 33-34 years of age) and what was going through ‘his’ mind at the time. First, a brief background sketch: my (now-deceased) first wife had inherited a volatile temper from her father such as to erupt on a near-daily basis (sometimes violently) and, on occasion in the latter years of her marriage, several times a day. Indeed, the fundamental reason for eventually bringing the marriage to an end, after the eldest off-spring had matured sufficiently to have left the family home to make his own way in the world, was because of choosing to no longer live in what is nowadays known as ‘an abusive relationship’ (i.e., female-on-male domestic violence). The two of us had a long-running difference of opinion as to how to deal with moods, in general, and with temper, in particular. I had been raised in the ‘stiff upper-lip’ school of thought (a.k.a. being suppressive of anti-social feelings) while she was of the ‘blow off steam’ variety (a.k.a. being expressive of same) inasmuch she firmly believed that ‘bottling it all up’ was futile, as the ‘cork would pop’ eventually, anyway, and how it was better to ‘let it all out in the moment’ before it could build up into ‘a full head of steam’. As the resident identity back then would tend to lose ‘his’ temper only every 4-6 weeks, or so, on average – usually over something quite trivial, mind you, whilst valiantly tolerating the major issues – and then juvenilely sulk for several days afterwards, because of having succumbed in such a puerile manner yet again, ‘he’ was not inclined to join the ‘let it all out in the moment’ school of thought despite being oft-times urged and constantly provoked to do so. Consequently, as ‘his’ intent was to imitate the actual, as experienced six months prior in a memorable four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE), it soon became apparent to ‘him’ that only the third alternative to either suppressing or expressing would do the trick. Upon advising ‘his’ wife of fifteen years standing of the course of action ‘he’ was putting into place – and likening ‘himself’ to being akin to a sponge and soaking up any and all offence given (i.e., by thus not taking offence in the first place ‘he’ would no longer be putting ‘himself’ into the suppression-expression dichotomy) as a descriptive analogy – she of course asked what ‘he’ intended to do upon becoming saturated which, to her mind, was the equivalent of her ‘full head of steam’ analogy. As the two analogies have no such equivalence – the one stems from taking offence (thereby generating ‘steam’ aplenty) and the other is founded upon not taking offence (which obviates any such generative process) – then the ‘wring it out’ ploy, which ‘he’ conceived of in reply to her query, never eventuated in practice as the amount of offensive language/ offensive gestures thusly absorbable approaches a near-infinite quantity. Thus the longer answer to your query is that because ‘he’ was focussed upon not taking offence in the first place – which mostly forestalled having to be either suppressive or expressive – ‘his’ conceptualisation did not include any specific way or particular means by which a ‘wring out’ would take place. The quite magical outcome depicted in Message № 12901, by somehow managing to be neither suppressive nor expressive after having succumbed once more despite such focus, was a serendipitous discovery. (Not having The Actual Freedom Trust web site for field-tested accounts of what worked to deliver the goods, and instead being drawn ineluctably to ‘his’ destiny by pure intent, resulted in many a disclosure of that ilk occurring as the wide and wondrous path became more and more apparent). As I have written elsewhere about a preliminary step towards ‘not taking offence in the first place’, without explicitly naming it as such, it may very well be worthwhile to re-present it here. Viz.: • [Respondent № 39]: (...) as long as we are alive in this world there are going to be things happen that are unacceptable. These are the things we have to learn to accept. The question I am asking is: Can I accept the unacceptable? (...). • [Richard]: Given that people are as-they-are and that the world is as-it-is there are more than a few things which are ‘unacceptable’ (child abuse, rape, murder, torture and so on). What worked for me twenty-odd years ago, as a preliminary step, was to rephrase the question so that it makes sense (rather than vainly apply any of those unliveable ‘unconditional acceptance’ type injunctions): • Can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable? This way intelligence need not be compromised ... intelligence will no longer be crippled. (Richard, List B, No. 39a, 18 August 2001). Quite frankly, any such ‘unconditional acceptance’ type admonishments are an insult to intelligence (to utilise a cliché) as the bully-boys and feisty-femmes would rule the roost quick smart were all decent peoples worldwide ever to become dumbed-down enough to adopt those unrealistic maxims uttered by anti-life entities only too-willing to sacrifice their host bodies for a noble cause. * Before proceeding any further it is important to note that the entire giving offence/ taking offence phenomenon is a very big deal, in regards to human relations, for the denizens of the ‘real world’ – in centuries past potentially-lethal duels would be fought between offendant and offendee (with ‘seconds’ in attendance to ensure agreed-upon rules of engagement were observed) as a means of obtaining the restitution of honour for the offended party – as is also evidenced by the increased incidence of modern-day ‘hate-crimes’ legislation whereby the concept of lèse-majesté, first attested to in the era of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE), is extended to regular citizens such that the heavy hand of the state (as states typically monopolise violence) can nowadays be called upon to exact retribution on behalf of the offendee. By way of illustration, as to just how big a deal that giving offence/ taking offence phenomenon is in the ‘real world’, it might be useful to draw attention (as it may have escaped notice due to extensive media focus directed elsewhere) to how the triggering-event which set off all the subsequent multifaceted sequences of events which, arguably, eventually led to the potentially-historical episodes of el-taḥarrush el-ginsy (a.k.a. sexual molestation/ harassment of women in public) by 1,000-plus malefactors in the city centre of Köln, Deutschland (a.k.a. Cologne, Germany) on New Year’s Eve 2015-2016, was the public humiliation, on December 17, 2010, of a 26-year-old male street vendor of fruit and vegetables in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, by a 45-year-old female municipal official who (allegedly) made a slur against his deceased father, spat at him, slapped him on the face, cast aside his unlicensed produce-barrow and confiscated his weighing scales. According to his mother, ‘It got to him deep inside, it hurt his pride’ (i.e., to be humiliated, publicly, by a female). * Thus the identity in situ at the beginning of 1981 went right to the heart of the matter from the get-go. The crux of the issue is that, as each and every identity is a feeling-being at root (i.e., ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’), all identities are hereditarily programmed by blind nature to emotionally-passionally react, instantaneously, to affectively-felt and/or psychically-intuited threats to their existence because, at their very core, it is ‘being’ itself at dire risk (i.e., ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself). (It is a genetic hangover from long-ago ancestral eras already many millions of years old when sapience emerged around 100+ millennia ago – as a boy, a youth, a young man, hunting game in the wild plus interacting daily with domesticated animals, revealed to me how they relied as much, if not more, on what was known generically as a ‘sixth sense’ as upon an acute sense of smell, alert hearing and keen eyesight in order to evade predation – which has become a liability, for modern-day humankind, rather than the asset it once was). Now, because the pure consciousness experience (PCE) – where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is in abeyance (unlike an altered state of consciousness (ASC) where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being reigns supreme as ‘Being’ itself) for the duration – experientially demonstrates how each and every identity has no existence whatsoever in actuality then any such offensiveness (previously experienced as affective/ psychic threats to ‘my’ existence/ to ‘my’ very ‘being’) loses its existential sting/ no longer has its dire effect. Indeed, ‘all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights’, and etcetera, soon become rather exquisite aids in ferreting-out any aspects of ‘me’ which have eluded exposure through hands-on inspection up till then (hence my parenthetical remark about the metaphorical ‘wringing it out’ ploy not being necessary, in practice, and my further above observation regarding the absorbability of offensive language/ offensive gestures being nigh-on infinite in regards quantity). * Incidentally, the reason why the nursery-doggerel ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me’ was largely ineffectual in childhood is because truisms such as that do not take into account the affective vibes and psychic currents – transmitted instantaneously via the psychic web connecting all feeling-beings regardless of spatial extension – which are part-and-parcel of the very act of giving offence/ being offensive and the vital element in the entire giving offence/ taking offence phenomenon which bedevils life in the ‘real world’. As I have oft-times said, it is the psychic web where the real power-play takes place. Howsoever, once the practice of not taking offence becomes habituated even the most virulent affective/ psychic power-play – being thereby recognised for what it is – can thus be weathered with relative ease. Being alive is a fascinating adventure, eh? Regards, Richard. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• P.S.: Whilst conducting a world-wide search for published works containing the word ‘offendee’ – which does not feature in regular dictionaries – I came across the following dissertation for a PhD. in ‘Religion-Social Ethics’ which examines and extols the virtues of forgiveness (after first having taken offence). Viz.: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SIZ3DPNUokkC&q=offendee ‘Tis a whole lot simpler – although not at all generative of reward-accruing virtue of course – to not take offence in the first place. (Richard, List D, Rick, 21 January 2016). RETURN TO DEFINITIONS INDEX RICHARD’S HOME PAGE The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) 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. Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997- . All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity