# Actual Freedom Library

Related Discussions Richard | 2 | Peter ________________________ Related Link The universe Intelligence 'Who' you are/ 'What' you are ________________________ Related Questions Meaning of Life? Body and Personality Change with Actual Freedom? Difference between Reality and Actuality? A Perfect Day without Feelings? Survive without Instinctual Passions? Life Without Feelings? Life Without Identity? No Life after Death? What happened at the Seminal Event? Do You Sleep, Dream? Personal Life before Actual Freedom Born Innocent Actual Freedom is Anti-Nature A PCE is not Universal No Defence against Alien Attack without Passions
Please note that the text below was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free.
## Life Life: a The condition, quality, or fact of being a living organism; the condition that characterizes animals and plants (when alive) and distinguishes them from inanimate matter, being marked by a capacity for growth and development and by continued functional activity; the activities and phenomena by which this is manifested. b Continuance or prolongation of animate existence (as opp. to death). c Animate existence as dependent on sustenance or favourable physical conditions. a Vitality as embodied in an individual person or thing. arch. b Living things and their activity; spec. human presence or activity. Oxford Dictionary Peter: When I read this I immediately thought of the most potent example of life that I have seen, which was an image of the formation of a human foetus. [Peter]: ‘The physical universe is infinite and perfect – the ‘stuff’ of the universe being defined as animal, vegetable and mineral. The ‘energies’ of the universe are purely the physical forces of the universe, regulating the ‘stuff’ of the universe. And I, as a human being, am made of the same stuff as the universe. Undeniably, I am the product of the meeting between a sperm and an egg. I remember once looking at my hand and it was obviously the claw of an animal, and a sexual one at that. I was not here before birth and I will not be here after death. I already know from my peak experiences that there is nothing ‘inside’ me as this body or separate from me to continue after I die. As a physical animal in the physical universe I have made it my aim to be happy and harmless, and the universe will do it’s ‘universe thing’ to aid in the creation of the best possible. I remember pondering this one day while walking along a country road and seeing a tree that had seeded beneath a log. It had bent around the log and then grown out at a steep angle towards the light. It only grew limbs on one side of the trunk so as to maintain its balance and strength. To say there is a God who looks after every tree, giving instructions, is plainly ridiculous. It is a life-force, if you like, but the tree was growing in the best way possible.
| Another image that struck me was a showing the beginning of the formation of a human foetus. It showed the growth in the first days when the main activity is the fervent multiplication and creation of new cells. The cells lined up to form an ever-thickening line which was to be the child’s backbone. As the cells began to form the beginnings of limbs and a head, a sack formed in the chest area, and a pulsing motion could be seen. All in the first few days! Astounding to see, and so extraordinary, that to put a God or anything else in the way was to entirely miss seeing the physical universe in operation.
To call life ‘sacred’ is to completely miss the point. Removing God, energies, emotions and feelings is seeing and experiencing the actual world free of a skin or film layered over the top. That I, as this body, am a collection of pre-programmed cells that forms a whole, which is sensate, mobile, able to think, reflect and communicate with others, and that this whole bundle eventually wears out and dies is so extraordinary, so amazing!’ Peter’s Journal, ‘The Universe’ The cause or source of living; the animating principle; a person who or thing which makes or keeps a thing alive. Energy; liveliness; animation, vivacity, spirit. Oxford Dictionary Here is where we begin to get off the facts of life and into the beliefs about life. There are literally countless beliefs, superstitions, pseudo-scientific theories and the like, that have been trotted out over the millennia to explain why we are here, as human beings, on this planet. The search for the cause, the source, for the beginning, the creation, or the creator, the meaning, the reason for it all, has always obsessed humans, solely because of the fear of being here in the first place and the subsequent resentment at continually feeling an alien in an alien place. This obsession with ‘why we are here’ has fuelled the perennial search for a greater or higher meaning to being here. This ‘search’ inevitably leads to the discovery that there is a Greater and Higher meaning – that there is a ‘person or thing’ (or energy) ‘that makes or keeps a thing alive’. To make this ‘discovery’ is effortless: one needs only slide over into the spiritual world, let go, surrender, close one’s eyes and go in. One enters the spiritual world that exists ethereally and is layered over the actual world. This is the world of animating spirits, Gods and Goddesses, ancient healings and esoteric medicines, divinations and prophecies, energies and auras, folk tales and legends, gurus and shamans, fairies and goblins, sacred sites and cosmic planes, chakras and levels of consciousness, telepathy and spiritualism, visions and entities, ESP and UFO’s, Chi Gong and Feng Shui, somas and souls, mysticism and meditation, rituals and rites, reincarnations and past lives, karmas and dharmas, devils and demons and so on. This whole phantasmagoric ‘other-world’ has been so embellished, so documented, so believed in, and made so substantial in the human psyche as to be convincingly real – and it is no small task to wrench oneself free from the common beliefs and Truths of a spirit world.

One would not bother unless one had a direct experience of the actual world and then one would never settle for the imaginary, the ethereal, the second-rate. One would never settle for ‘right-suffering’, or being ‘grateful’ to some-one or some-thing for ‘life’, when one could eliminate the instinctual source of fear and sorrow that is the very cause of suffering and resentment in the first place. One would never bother with being Here and Now with one’s head stuck in the clouds, searching for True meaning, when one could be here and now in the actual world with one’s feet firmly on the earth, with meaning abundantly and extravagantly apparent everywhere.

The animate existence of an individual in respect of its duration; the period from birth to death, from birth to a particular time, or from a particular time to death.

6. A being’s, esp. a person’s, animate existence viewed as a possession of which one is deprived by death.

a The series of actions and occurrences constituting the history of an individual from birth to death; the course of (human) existence from birth to death. Also (Theol.), either of the two states of human existence separated by death. b A particular manner or course of living. c The active part of human existence; the business and active pleasures of the world. Also, the position of participating in the affairs of the world, of being a recognized member of society.

Oxford Dictionary

Which brings us to the definition of a person’s life as in ‘my’ life. I find ‘a person’s animate existence viewed as a possession of which one is deprived by death’ the most telling definition. As human beings, we have no memory of how we got here, we resent being here, we try to make the best of it, we seek an escape from life in the form of redemption or salvation, we desperately fear death and, as old age sets in, passionately hope for life after death. And this little lot of sad, sorry and fearful continuum of emotional memories and reactions, we call having a ‘life’. A person’s life is, in fact, no more than the bundle of emotional memories of the past and emotional-backed anticipations of the future and the whole lot is typified by see-saw swings of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. ‘I’ – as the thinker – desperately seek to keep the instinctual ‘me’ – as the feeler – under control and in check by being good, being loving, being caring, etc. As one’s life progresses this leads to the development of a cunning cynicism that obliterates any naiveté and fosters a continual need for ‘self’-control that actively inhibits one from breaking free from the shackles of one’s social identity. Thus one is fated by nature at conception to be an instinctually-driven being and is then fettered by nurture from birth onwards to be a social identity bound by morals, ethics, values, traditions, and psittacisms and – as Frank Sinatra sang, so bitter sweetly – ‘That’s life’.

But actualism provides the solution to the Human Condition and ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is the path to the door marked Freedom from the Human Condition. By continuously asking oneself this question, and doing whatever is necessary to substantiate happiness and harmlessness in this moment, one begins to disrupt the continuity of one’s emotional life and weakens its stranglehold and dominance. The exclusive attention paid to this moment of being alive actually reduces the tendency to dwell on past emotional memories or be emotionally occupied with future events. This has the effect of shrinking one’s life to this moment only – which is the only moment I can experience being alive. Thus one gradually eases out from having an emotional life and begins to live this moment, and this moment, and ... The aim is to string more and more of those moments together, and one day you get to lay in bed at night time and say ‘What a perfect day I had!’. And then the aim becomes to string more and more of those days together and you find that you are on a path that frees you from malice and sorrow. And then you find yourself living a Virtual Freedom – ‘virtual’ as in ‘that is so in essence or effect, although not recognized formally, actually’. And then you know that your ‘life’, as you knew it, will never be the same again – in fact, it is soon to end completely and not a trace of the old ‘me’ will be able to surface ... ever again. Virtual Freedom is the first step – ‘self’-extinction the next.

A condition of power, activity, or happiness; esp. (chiefly in biblical and religious use) the condition of a person freed from the state of sin equated with spiritual death; salvation; regenerate condition. Oxford Dictionary

The final relevant definition points to attaining a new life, as in being Born Again or becoming Enlightened or Self-Realized, whereby one realizes a new identity – a new imaginary life in a new imaginary world – thus becoming ‘freed’ from the state of sin (or life in the real world). This new state is commonly known in psychiatric terms as an Altered State of Consciousness. For those not so dedicated to the pursuit of a spiritual New Life there is the more secular version offered by some therapists whereby the aim is to strengthen, en-richen or empower one’s existing ‘life’ such that one wins more than loses, one overcomes adversity, one fights for one’s rights, one becomes better, stronger, more powerful, more self-fulfilled, more self-centred, etc. Both approaches – denial or making the best of it – fail to address the fact that human beings are innately programmed with an instinct to survive that makes fear, aggression, nurture and desire an integral part of the Human Condition. Actual Freedom is the only approach to the human dilemma that addresses this fact – every other approach avoids this fundamental fact.

Actual Freedom is the third alternative to the spiritual avoidance or the traditional acceptance of one’s ‘lot in life’.

What an excellent thing to discover – the chance to actually do something about one’s lot in life – to become happy and harmless.

Library Index

Actual Freedom Homepage

Actual Freedom Site Map

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-
. All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity