# Actual Freedom Library

## Glossary C – D dictionary definition and accompanying description by Peter ...
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.
Library-Index | A | B | C | D | E | F | H | I | J | L | M | N | P | R | S | T | U-V | | calenture | common sense | compassion | consciousness | contemplation | calenture –– From Spanish: calentura; calenture heat, fever, from calentar: to heat, from Latin: calent, calens, calere to be warm. To see as in the delirium of one affected with calenture. (Example) Wordsworth: ‘Hath fed on pageants floating through the air. Or calentures in depths of limpid flood’. Calenture is a name formerly given to various fevers occurring in tropics; especially to a form of furious delirium accompanied by fever, among sailors, which sometimes led the affected person to imagine the sea to be a green field, and to throw himself into it. Synonyms: passion, ardour, fervour, fire, feverishness, exalt, craze, zeal, rapture, ecstasy). Oxford Dictionary Richard: There is no ‘Divine Realm’ other than ‘man’s version’ (except woman’s version). All divinity is a product of feverish human imagination. There is a very good word for this globally occurring apparition: calenture. The word ‘calenture’ is an incredibly useful word as it describes the delirious passion needed to manifest the delusion that: There is a God ... and: I am that God. Related Discussions common sense –– Good sound practical sense in everyday matters; general sagacity. Oxford Dictionary Peter: Something rarely practiced individually and almost unheard of in collective decision making. Emotions, feelings, passions and beliefs – in short ‘self’ interest – always over-ride any possibility of common sense operating. When ‘push comes to shove’ the veneer of moral and ethical restraint is wont to collapse in the face of surging instinctual passions, particularly evidenced in the horror of war time or whenever ‘law and order’ breaks down. Further, these same feelings and passions are the very cause of wars as they are inevitably fought for honour, pride, justice, ‘rights’, retribution and love. On an individual level, given that the base feelings are malice and sorrow (anger, resentment, hate, sadness, depression, melancholy, loneliness, etc.), we desperately seek relief in the ‘good’ feelings (love, trust, compassion, ‘togetherness’, friendship, etc.). Thus one is forever a victim of one’s feelings, forever in a battle, forever in confusion, forever needing to be vigilant, forever trying to be good. This constant flow of emotion-based thoughts actively conspires and prevents any possibility of common sense operating in the human brain. The circuits are literally jammed almost all of the time, swamped by the emotion-based thoughts of a fictitious alien entity fashioned upon the instinctual primitive self ‘wired in’ by Blind Nature. This alien psychological and psychic entity could be seen as analogous to computer software that corrupts the hardware and only upon its elimination can body and brain function optimally. With the elimination of this ‘software program’ one is able to come to one’s senses both literally and figuratively, and common sense is then able to operate freely, uncorrupted by instinctual malice and sorrow. Related Discussions compassion –– Participation in another’s suffering; fellow-feeling, sympathy. Pity, inclining one to show mercy or give aid. Sorrowful emotion, grief. Oxford Dictionary Peter: An agreement to common suffering. By the very nature of compassion one needs someone lower, poorer, or less spiritually advanced than oneself to practice compassion on. This is blatantly obvious in Buddhism where the Dalai Lama is venerated as the re-incarnation of ‘the Lord who looks down with compassion on the world of sentient beings’. He was the God-King of Tibet and all of the wealth and power of the country was centralized in the temples. This Theocracy ensured that the poor stayed poor, while temples – and dead Lamas – were coated in gold. The wealth of the Vatican and other religious centres attests to the power and hypocrisy of spiritual compassion in action. Current New Dark-Age fashion has it that earth is a ‘sacred’ place (Mother Earth, Gaia, etc) and, as such, we should treat the land, animals and plants as holy and sacred and feel compassion for their ‘suffering’ and ‘death ’. This version of compassion then values the tiger in India, the python in Africa and the butterfly in South America more highly than one’s fellow human beings who are genuinely suffering from poverty, disease, over-population, starvation and lack of education. This ‘compassion’, when practiced assiduously, often leads to the stopping of many projects and developments that would improve the living standard, comfort and health of humans in poorer undeveloped countries. To maintain the sacred-ness of compassion as a human feeling is to perversely insists that no one is ever allowed to be free of suffering without being accused of being evil, unfeeling or callous towards others ‘less fortunate’. Misery and suffering is to remain forever locked in the human psyche by the mutual agreement to suffer together. Feeling compassion is but an attempt to alleviate the feeling of sorrow exactly as love is an attempt to alleviate aggression by a valiantly promoting and valuing the good instinctual emotions and repressing or transcending the bad emotions. It is only by stepping out of the ‘real ’ world’s agreement to mutual suffering and the ‘spiritual’ world’s sanctimonious and pious Divine compassion that one can completely rid oneself of sorrow. When one stops ‘feeling’ compassion and empathy, there is the direct opportunity available to actually do something about the wars, tortures, poverty and physical suffering of one’s fellow human beings – to facilitate an end to sorrow in oneself. Related Discussions consciousness The state of being conscious. The state or faculty, or a particular state, of being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, actions, etc. The totality of the thoughts, feelings, impressions, etc., of a person or group; such as a body of thoughts etc. relating to a particular sphere; a collective awareness or sense. Oxford Dictionary Peter: Consciousness has three meanings – In a normal person consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake. Unconsciousness is what is happening when alive and in deep sleep, concussed or anaesthetised and is epitomised by oblivion. The second meaning is the one that is commonly used to describe the awareness of oneself and is epitomized by three faculties … the sensate, the cerebral and the affective. Thus in a normal person consciousness refers to the consciousness of the psychological and psychic entity only, who we ‘think’ and ‘feel’ we are, as opposed to what we are. It is only in a Pure Consciousness Experience that the psychological and psychic entity’s affective and cerebral dominance is temporarily absent that the extraordinary perfection and purity of the actual is sensately evidenced. This collective sense of consciousness forms such a strong illusion as to appear real. Unfortunately the actual evidence of this collective ‘consciousness’ is that it varies from culture to culture and religion to religion and, as such, is merely a socially imbibed and adopted belief system. The collective sense of consciousness is the direct result of the automatic instilling of a culturally appropriate conscience in each group member with it’s associated values, ethics and morals. This collective consciousness is epitomized by a feeling of belonging to a group and gives rise to such feelings as ‘we are all one’, ‘we are all God’s children’, ‘we are all That’ or other similar platitudes. As is evidenced by the facts of ethnic, territorial, religious and ethical wars these feelings are utterly fanciful and nonsensical. The over-riding selfishness inevitably proves stronger for those willing to grab for power and in the spiritual world the most powerful leaders inevitably declare narcissistically that ‘I am the One’, I am God’ or ‘I am That’. For the mere followers, the collective consciousness operates such that one will inevitably surrender one’s will for the supposed ‘good of the whole’, and if ‘push comes to shove’ to willingly and passionately kill and die for the group and its leader. It is this collective consciousness that lies at the very heart of one’s social identity and forever enslaves the individual to a particular group and all human kind to the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. Related Discussions Consciousness | Self-consciousness contemplation –– The action of thinking about or pondering over a thing continuously; musing. The action of viewing as a possibility or as a purpose; taking into account; prospect, intention. Oxford Dictionary Peter: An enormous amount of confusion, misinformation and ignorance abounds regarding the functioning of the brain and most of it stems from the primitive beliefs of Ancient Wisdom. Humans have the largest, most sophisticated brains of any primates and this endows them with an ability to think, remember and reflect to an extent far in excess of other sentient beings. This capacity has allowed for the species to develop far beyond the crude necessities of survival and has resulted in the extraordinary advances in technology, communications, transport, comfort and leisure. This development has been the direct result of contemplation – the brain’s ability to reflect on issues and possibilities whilst freed of the psychological and psychic ‘self’-centred instinctual programming, albeit temporarily. This pure thinking is epitomized by such phrases as ‘a thought just came into my head but ‘I’ can’t claim credit for it’. Many scientists, inventors, engineers, and designers report that the thought just came by itself – it wasn’t as though ‘I’ thought of it. Thinking is what the brain does and it can do it superbly well. The next challenge is to remove the programming of the primitive, redundant, self-centred survival instincts from the human brain in order to free us from neurotic self-centred thought and impassioned imagination. While contemplation has led to most of humankind’s amazing discoveries and inventions, it has also led to some of the most inane as in the case of purely intellectual contemplation – usually undertaken by men in Ivory towers, or mystics in monastic cells. Contemplating such questions as ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What happens after death?’ has led not only the mystics but the scientists as well into passionate imagination resulting in elaborate fairy stories of meta-physical worlds and spiritual concepts. If what is factual and actual is ignored or denied in contemplative thought, then passionate imagination is the inevitable result. Meditation, as developed in the Eastern Religions, is the opposite to contemplation as one attempts to deny the rational thinking process and instead inculcates and indoctrinates the brain to regard the physical world as an illusion and the ‘inner’ world of imagination to be real. This induced imagination gives rise to good and Divine feelings which are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts, i.e. that which the ‘self’ fervently wishes to be true. By actively pursuing transcendence of the real-world ‘bad’ emotions and thoughts, one emphasizes and gives full reign to creating a fictitious spirit-world of good emotions and thoughts. Meditation leads to an ‘inner’ world of white lights, heart-felt feelings, bliss, poetry, glory, God, the Eternal, the Timeless, Silence, Oneness and Wholeness – all of which are nothing more than imaginary events occurring inside the head. Delusion is the common psychological term for this phenomena, ‘seeing visions’ is another. To lamely follow the platitude of ‘get out of one’s head and into one’s heart’ is to give full license to passionate imagination as both a denial of, and escape from, the world as-it-is and people as-they-are. Any chance of peace on earth and an actual end to malice and sorrow is willingly traded for a passion-fuelled, utterly selfish and self-aggrandizing delusion. Pure contemplation, on the other hand, is the brain’s ability to make sense of the physical world as directly experienced by the senses, free of any imagination, affectation, concepts, traditions or beliefs. The universe is clearly seen as infinite, eternal and perfect with no ‘outside’ to it. Contemplation, when guided by pure intent and a relentless commitment to what is factual and actual, will inevitably free one from the grip of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that nestle in the bosom of every human being. Related Discussions Library-Index | A | B | C | D | E | F | H | I | J | L | M | N | P | R | S | T | U-V | | death | delight | delusion | denial | desire | dissociation | doubt | death — The act or fact of dying; the end of life; the final and irreversible cessation of the vital functions of an animal or human. The ceasing to be, extinction, or annihilation of something. Oxford Dictionary Peter: physical – Pretty plain and obvious, it is the very root cause of human beings’ existential fear, as we know that death can come at any moment. ‘I’ have no control over the beating of the heart – when it stops, ‘I’ die. The physical body has an inbuilt lifespan – from foetus to fertilizer, with no exceptions. No wonder people passionately believe in a life after death. The instinct of self-survival imbued in the human animal, consisting of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, ensures an almost constant preoccupation with survival at all costs and a constant fear of the inevitability of death. There is only one way to be free of these debilitating instinctual emotions, before physical death. psychological & psychic – To put it bluntly: ‘you’ in ‘your’ totality, who are but a passionate illusion, must die a dramatic illusory death commensurate to ‘your’ pernicious existence. The drama must be played out to the end ... there are no short cuts here. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it. This extinction is an inenvitable event that eliminates the psyche itself. When this is all over there will be no ‘being’ at all. Related Discussions delight –– Give great pleasure or enjoyment to; please highly. Be highly pleased (to do, with), take great pleasure (in). Enjoy greatly, delight in. Oxford Dictionary Peter: Usually associated with innocence, naiveté and spontaneity. A much under-rated and rarely found quality in humans but abundantly obvious in the actual world. This delight, together with perfection and purity, is readily apparent in the peak experience or PCE and is increasingly experienced on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom. Delight is, after all, the intrinsic experience of humans when free of malice and sorrow. As the senses are increasingly freed, a veritable smorgasbord of sensual delight becomes readily apparent. Serendipity abounds and a fascination with life activates delight and sensuousness as one does all one can to mimic the perfection and purity that becomes increasingly apparent all around in the physical world. One’s mind, more and more freed of imagination and the chemical influence of instinctual passions, is capable of great clarity and, as apperceptive awareness replaces self-centred neurosis, one knows one’s days are numbered. One is literally and figuratively coming to one’s senses and is less as less affected by feelings and emotions arising from the animal instinctual passions. By this total and sincere dedication to what is actual, pure and perfect, one eventually abandons control, so to speak, whereby the very process of ‘self’-immolation is set in motion – then it is not a process that one has any control over, it is happening by itself. From the position of delight, one can vitalize one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all ... and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive. Then one is no longer intellectually making sense of life ... the wonder of it all drives all intellectual sense away. Such delicious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté (which is the closest one can get to innocence) the nourishing of which is essential if the charm of it all is to occur. Then, as one stares intently at the world about by glancing lightly with caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is ... and I am the experiencing of what is happening. But try not to possess it and make it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared. Related Discussions delusion –– 1. The action of deluding or of being deluded; the state of being deluded. 2. A false impression or opinion, esp. as a symptom of mental illness. Delude –– Cause to accept foolishly a false or mistaken belief; deceive, beguile; impose upon with false impressions. Oxford Dictionary Peter: To delude oneself is to take on, willingly accept, and fervently indulge in a belief to the point of being totally convinced of it being a fact. This condition is most common in spiritual believers who proclaim their beliefs to be a ‘truths ’, thereby carefully and cleverly avoiding using the word fact. Thus belief, masquerading as ‘truth’, is then held in higher esteem than fact and even more so when it is proclaimed to be a Truth, the capitalization instantly and magically endowing it with some Divine omnipresence and omnipotence. To call a belief a ‘Truth’, while blatantly and deliberately disregarding what is factual and actual, is delusion in the extreme. Given that a delusion is a symptom of mental illness, the active cultivation of delusion, as in spiritual and meditation practices, leads directly to the institutionalized insanity of religion. Related Discussions delusions of grandeur –– an exaggerated estimation of one’s own status or personality; megalomania. Oxford Dictionary Peter: The Altered State of Consciousness commonly known as Enlightenment is a classic delusion of grandeur for how exaggerated an estimation of one’s own personality can there be than to consider oneself to be God or at One with God. In a monotheist society such an extreme delusion would be regarded as a severe case of mental illness, but in the current New Dark Age with the fashion for Eastern Spiritual belief this delusion of grandeur is coveted and regarded in the highest esteem. Sustained by passionate belief to the point of conviction, the Glamour, Glory and Glitz of not only becoming God, but having others worship you as a God, is a mightily seductive lure for the merely mortal ‘self ’. The greatest delusion of grandeur is the transition from ‘self’ to ‘Self’, from mundane mortality to Divine Immortality. Related Discussions denial –– 1. The act of saying ‘no’; refusal of something asked or desired. 2. A statement or assertion that something is untrue or untenable; contradiction; refusal to acknowledge the existence or reality of a thing. 3. disavowal, disowning; esp. refusal to acknowledge a person as leader etc. Oxford Dictionary Peter: So prolific is denial in the Human Condition that it deserves a bit more rooting around to find the real source of it. As you well know, the most prevalent self-defence mechanism evident in any correspondence we have had about the Human Condition, is one of breathtaking denial. This is the dominant response to any attempted slightly in-depth discussion or exchange, be it with Richard, Vineeto or myself. This denial is what moved me off my bum to dig in to Paul Lowe’s book, and further investigate the denial that is enshrined in the teachings of Eastern religion and philosophy. A useful exercise in itself, and great fun to do, but the response to such uncovering of the lies, trickery and deceptions of the spiritual path is inevitably one of even more denial. ‘So what’, ‘it’s got nothing to do with me’, ‘I’m not on the spiritual path’, ‘My Guru tells the Truth’, ‘it’s about the feeling around the Gurus not the facts’ are typical responses. There have been countless times when I have said to someone what a relief it is to have abandoned the spiritual world and the spiritual person I have been talking to say they agree and nod their head. Two recent examples was a woman who had just arrived in town after being in the Himalayas meditating for 3 years, the other who had just produced a magazine attacking the members of his sect for not being loyal to his spiritual master. And yet both denied they were spiritual in any way! Whenever religions are exposed for the puerile nonsense they are it’s always someone else’s religion, or the person is not part of a religion, or they simply slink away. This denial is so common a response that I now regard it as par for the course. Ah, here comes the denial phase and anyone initially interested disappears over the hill with their tails between their legs. Richard has found a few hard-nosed spiritual teachers and spiritual intellectuals – those with the most investment – who have stuck around to defend their beliefs but their defence gets sillier and sillier as time goes on and more beliefs are debunked as more facts are presented. But, of course, there is something deeper beneath this façade of denial. One of the major barriers is pride. To admit one is merely following a fashionable belief, mouthing a psittacism, senselessly following the herd, being the marionette who one was taught to be, and robotically behaving exactly how one’s peers demand, is a crushing blow, particularly to the proudly humble spiritual devotee. The other factor that operates to reinforce denial, as you have noted, is the desperate need to belong to the group and the spiritual believers form a very large, safe and increasingly popular group in humanity. So I see pride and fear operating and these were certainly issues that I had to tackle in acknowledging the failure of the spiritual path to deliver anything remotely resembling freedom, peace and happiness. Digging a little deeper is to get to the core of one’s being and to come across one’s essential nature – the instinctual self. Richard uses the phrase ‘lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning’ to describe the psychological and psychic entity that ‘I ’ am. Lost, lonely and frightened are qualities that many will admit to, and it is indeed the tacit acknowledgement of this that brings many people to the spiritual path in the first place. These qualities also provide the fuel for many to give the spiritual path 100% effort. The very, very cunning quality of the self ensures that many people will gleefully and gullibly accept the spiritual teachings, deny the existence of the physical world, deny that they are a mortal flesh and blood, believe in their own immortality and fully indulge in the fantasy delusion that they are indeed God-on-earth. This is an act of utter selfishness, cunningly disguised as a noble sacrifice to a ‘higher cause’, yet exposed for the fraud it is when the few who succeed become Gods-on-earth, Saints, Masters, revered teachers and the like – to be feted, worshipped, adored, flattered and fawned by one’s fellow human beings. The very, very cunning nature of the self is evident in the real world as hypocrisy, corruption, deceit, lies and denial. In spite of the constant pleas and extolling to obey society’s moral and ethical standards, human beings, when push comes to shove, inevitably revert to natural behaviour. Natural behaviour is instinctual behaviour – genetically programmed to ensure the survival of the species. The human species has been endowed with a self-survival program that almost inevitably over-rides the consideration of the survival of the group. Each human is instilled with a distinct individual self which is embellished by the ability to think and reflect into a substantive entity, an identity of psychological and psychic substance – ‘who’ we think and feel we are. It is obvious over time bargains and deals were done between groups of humans, be they biological family groups and/or tribal groups, and these eventually became formalized into particular sets of moral and ethical rules. These rules, instilled to ensure the group’s survival, became paramount over the genetically encoded, essentially individually selfish, survival program. This explanation of the human instinctual program accounts for the ongoing failure of human beings to live together in anything remotely resembling peace and harmony. An understanding of the instinctual passions in action also reveals the spiritual search for self-discovery and self-realization as nothing other than an instinctually-driven attempt at self-aggrandizement and a lust for personal psychic power over others. Related Discussions desire –– 1 The fact or condition of desiring; the feeling that one would derive pleasure or satisfaction from possessing or obtaining something; a longing. 2 sexual appetite, lust. 3 an expressed wish, a request. 4 something desired or longed for. Oxford Dictionary Peter: The layer of programming beneath the social identity is the instinctual self – who we ‘feel’ we are, consisting of a primitive self and the survival instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, instilled by blind nature to ensure the survival of the species. This instinctual programming has been held as inviolable and unalterable, and, as such, has remained un-investigated up until now. The only superficial ‘tinkering’ that has been undertaken to date has been to emphasise the so-called ‘good’ instincts of nurture and desire and repress the ‘bad’ instincts of fear and aggression. The social application of morals and ethics provides the ‘carrot and stick’, but police, laws and armies are ultimately required to keep the instinctual passions in check. The whole of our supposedly civilised world is still, at the very core, based on the suppression and control of these primitive instincts. Desire is the drive to survive – it translates into sexual conquest, power over others, and attaining the necessities of survival such as territory, food, offspring, and the protection of others. Desire is the instinct that drives us to sexual avarice and a blind urge to impregnate, procreate and reproduce ourselves – come what may. The relentless desire to accumulate, amass, covert, dominate, control and obliterate is the direct cause of poverty, corruption, hunger and famine. It is common wisdom that ‘you can’t change Human Nature’. ‘Of course you can – why not?’ said Richard, and I liked that. Why not indeed? One can harness this powerful affective energy of desire so as to bring about what one actually longs for: perfect peace and understanding. For me, once I found out about Actual Freedom, I dug into it and remembered a pure consciousness experience which activated a sincere intent in me – a burning desire that we humans find a way to live together in peace and harmony on the magical fairy tale like, paradisiacal planet. Related Discussions dissociation –– The action of dissociating; the condition of being dissociated; disassociation. 2 Psychol. The process or result of breaking up an association of ideas. 3 Psychiatry. A process, or the resulting condition, in which certain concepts or mental processes are separated from the conscious personality; spec. the state of a person suffering from dissociated personality. Oxford Dictionary Richard: How trauma and dissociation are related: Professionals working in the area of abuse and trauma are quite familiar with dissociative processes. Clients/Patients commonly share in the context of treatment the phenomena of separating their thoughts and emotions from the trauma that they were experiencing and/or had experienced in the past. This separation (dissociation) of one’s thoughts, emotions and even body sensations are commonly seen in traumatic disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In addition, patients who are diagnosed with a dissociative disorder are often discovered to have trauma in their background. The apparent co-existence of trauma and dissociation have led many therapists to note that ‘you can’t have trauma without dissociation and that you can’t have dissociation without trauma’. There are always exceptions to this noted co-existence of trauma and dissociation, but nevertheless the phenomenon is quite commonly reported to therapists. There has even been discussion within the diagnostic community of possibly having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) listed as a dissociative disorder and thus removed from the DSM-IV category of Anxiety Disorders. © George F. Rhoades, Jr., Ph.D. November 1, 1998, P.O. Box 1164, Pearl City, HI. 96782. Richard: All the mystics advise dissociation (wherein painful reality is transformed into a bad dream) as being the most effective means to deal with all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like. Just as a traumatized victim of an horrific and terrifying event makes the experience unreal in order to cope with the ordeal, all the Gurus and the God-Men, the Masters and the Messiahs, the Avatars and the Saviours and the Saints and the Sages have desperately done precisely this thing (during what is sometimes called ‘the dark night of the soul’). Mystics have been transmogrifying the real world ‘reality’ into an unreal ‘True Reality’ via the epiphenomenal imaginative/intuitive facility born of the psyche (which is formed by the instinctual passions genetically endowed by blind nature for survival purposes) for millennia. Such dissociation is a psychotic sickness culturally institutionalized into a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind … hence the divine perpetuation of all the misery and mayhem across the millennia through a belief in karma or samsara or some-such metaphysical reason being the cause of such aberrant behaviour. Mysticism is nothing more and nothing less than a frantic coping-mechanism, institutionalized into a cultural metaphysics over thousands and thousands of years … especially if accompanied by dissociative states such as ‘derealisation’ and ‘alternate personality disorder’ and others. It is also known as ‘disassociation’, or ‘disassociative identity disorder’ and dissociative reactions are attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional tension and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalization and derealization are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality. Dissociation becomes abnormal when the once mild or transient expedient becomes too intense, lasts too long, or escapes from a person’s control … and leads to a separation from the surroundings which seriously disturbs object relations. In object estrangement the once familiar world of ordinary objects – the world of people, things and events – seems to have undergone a disturbing and often indescribable change. Related Discussions doubt –– To be uncertain in opinion about, hold questionable, hesitate to believe. A state of affairs such as to occasion uncertainty. Oxford Dictionary Peter: A most insidious feeling that gradually envelops us as the world we emerge into changes from that which is simply perceived by the senses, into a fearful world of emotional upheaval both in one’s self and in those around us. We emerge from a good, safe and warm nest to soon be confronted by confusion, uncertainty, maliciousness, lies, and a bewildering choice of actions, morals, ethics, traditions, values and opinions. One’s thoughts race in a never ending cascade of rambling fears and false bravado and one’s feelings swing wildly from ecstasy to depression. The traditional antidotes to doubt and fear are trust, faith and hope and, as such, are a wobbly lot of values to proceed in any action with surety or confidence. To wallow in doubt is but to wallow, and beneath the doubt, ever lurking, lies fear, untouched and unchallenged, trapping yet another victim to the Human Condition. For those daring enough to replace beliefs with facts, feelings with common sense, and doubt with intent and action, it is then possible to calmly and trenchantly investigate and eliminate instinctual fear with its associated malice and sorrow. Given that a simple definition of a fact is that it is something that can be verified by seeing, touching, hearing, smelling or tasting and that it demonstratively so to anyone. For instance, the computer monitor you are watching and these words on the monitor are facts. This may seem simplistic but many meta-physically inclined people have trouble with even this level of sensibility. The other definition of a fact is that it should work, and this should be able to be demonstrated, replicated and substantiated by repeatable experiments. This eliminates belief, trust, faith, hope, conviction, intuition and doubt from any investigation for one always has fact as a reliable touchstone. In a PCE it is startlingly evident that the human condition we are born into doesn’t work – it begets either cynical acceptance or fanciful denial as the prime mechanisms of coping with malice and sorrow. It then becomes an imperative to question all the morals, ethics, ideals, theories, ideas, concepts, truths, doctrines and dogmas that have been passed on to us by those who were here before us. Once begun in earnest, this process does not result in endless questioning loops for as one replaces fact with belief one’s confidence grows to the point where one no longer needs to believe others – the very action of believing stops. This is not a meta-physical ‘knowing’ or feeling, but a sensible down-to-earth discovery and acknowledgement of the facts of human existence on earth. From this feet-on-the-ground state of increasing confidence and heightened sensuousness one is then able to step out of the human condition with gay abandon and impunity. Related Discussions Library-Index | A | B | C | D | E | F | H | I | J | L | M | N | P | R | S | T | U-V | A Down-to-Earth Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless in this Lifetime Peter’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997- . All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity