Please note that Peter’s correspondence 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.
Selected Correspondence Peter Living Together PETER: The first thing is the business of finding out the facts of the human condition we find ourselves born in to, as opposed to what we have been told is the truth about the human condition. What we have come to believe and commonly accept as the truth is what has been passed on to each and every human being from their parents and peers ... who got it from their parents and peers ... who got it from their parents and peers ... stretching back into the dark mists of time. Our bondage to the human condition can be summed up as – [Peter]: ‘This is the way it is, because this is the way it is, because this is the way it has always been and this is the way it will always be’. [endquote]. In order to become free of the human condition it is essential to laboriously crack through these shackles – the beliefs, morals, ethics, values, viewpoints and psittacisms that bond humans to a life of essential suffering and heart-wrenching misery. The easiest and most direct method to do this is to read the Actual Freedom Trust website and confirm what is written by your own life experiences and your own investigations. The method I used to confirm that what Richard was saying about the human condition was factual and sensible was to read, watch TV and browse the internet for further information. This process of finding the facts does involve a fair bit of work and investigation. One needs to check many sources, look for contradictions, be very wary of the source of the material and the bias of the authors or presenters, seek out the data behind the conclusions others are making, etc. Initially I ran a little game whereby I simply assumed that I, and everyone else, had got it wrong and looked for why and where – this way the investigation became exciting and thrilling – not daunting and fearful. Pretty soon I was able to confirm that I and everyone else had got it wrong – I had been searching for freedom and meaning 180 degrees in the wrong direction. GARY: I would say it takes considerable work and investigation to uncover the facts of a situation, but the rewards are immediate, tangible, and lasting. In this investigative work, everything is up for scrutiny and one cannot rely on the ‘time-honoured’ truisms and psittacisms that one usually falls back on to explain what is happening in life. PETER: As I re-read what I wrote to you I was reminded of something you wrote recently – [Gary]: This desperation that I talk about comes out of my life experience. Everyone I know has been affected by war and violence. Nobody has escaped the carnage, at least nobody I know. I myself have been both victimized by violence and prone to violence myself in the past. Gary to Peter, 31.12.2000 I don’t want to leave the impression that dispelling belief and unearthing facts is an intellectual exercise based upon reading and discerning what others have discovered. The quickest, most direct and most effective way of determining what is fact, i.e. what works and what doesn’t work, is by your own life experiences. By the time mid-life comes around, most people have had sufficient life experiences to already know what doesn’t work and only if there is still some doubt about a particularly sticky issue do you need to investigate further. As an example, I needed only to draw on my own life experiences and my observations of others around me to know that love does not work, and never can work, to negate malice or sorrow. This is why I wrote my journal in the style I did, including many examples of my life experiences and my inevitable failures to find peace and happiness, both in the real world and the spiritual world. The other kind of investigation is by deliberately setting out to make sense of a vexing issue, as we did in our recent conversation about intelligence vs. instinctual passion. In this type of investigation you root around and dig up all the information, data and observations you can and balance those against the currently accepted viewpoints and beliefs that others have about the subject, and then you eventually come to find an answer – to come to an understanding of the facts of the situation. Vineeto and I have spent many, many hours mulling over issues relevant to the human condition with no disagreement or disharmony simply because we were searching for the facts – something that is clearly evident, obvious and indisputable. PETER: What I discovered about my friendships was that the moment ‘I’ stopped maintaining them and cultivating them for my own self-ish purposes that the friend would also stop contacting me and the friend-ship would eventually sink because it needed two people, both constantly rowing, to keep it afloat. I started to see that everybody is busily engaged in living their friends’ lives and not their own. When I eventually saw this clearly, I stopped the insidious practice of seeking others out for emotional support – mutually agreeing how tough things are – or blaming others for the mess my life was in. This proved a turning point in my living with Vineeto, as I started to take total responsibility for my behaviour, feelings, moods and actions. GARY: It has been my experience that ‘I’ need special friends for the validation and confirmation they give of ‘my’ existence. I am not a misanthrope. Neither am I a hermit. I enjoy the company of other people, I enjoy talking to many different kinds of people, and I enjoy going out socially from time to time but I do not keep any ‘friends’ at the present time. I think my questioning of relationships of this sort really began with the suicide of my ‘best’ friend in 1989. It was a terrible shock, and the emotions which it engendered in me were not very pleasant. After that, I began to be much more selective in terms of having friends, but also I began pulling away from these kinds of exclusive relationships. I began to see that a ‘friendship’ in a way is a special kind of ‘love’ relationship, and in my experience at least, involves a considerable amount of dependency, possessiveness, jealousy, envy, guilt, etc. I think you are right that people are engaged in living their friends’ lives and not their own. I have wondered if perhaps I were trying to insulate myself emotionally from the pain of being attached and related to someone in a close relationship and I think I am. I find the sticky mess of friendship too much to endure, and I neither want to experience the painful emotions related to having a friend nor the positive emotions of love and affection for another. Probably that makes me an ‘emotional cripple’ in some people’s eyes, but that has been my experience. PETER: I found myself in a similar position after my third major live-together relationship with a woman came to an end. I clearly saw that I didn’t want to do it again only to suffer another failure, and to cause another woman to suffer because of my failure. When I came across actualism, I wanted to get beyond the debilitations of being an ‘emotional cripple’, or the cruelty of being an ‘emotional crippler’. It was clear to me that the only way to do this was not to withdraw but to go fully into the business of friendship and one-on-one relationship so as to discover what the debilitating feelings of love are preventing from becoming apparent. What I found was that underneath the surface layer of the feelings of love, and its co-emotion hate, lays a direct flesh and blood human being to flesh and blood human being intimacy that far surpasses the fickle conditional feelings of friendship and love. Turning away or withdrawing from this potentiality was not possible once I knew the quality of this intimacy that was evident in a pure consciousness experience. This is why I went into my relationship with Vineeto with a 100% commitment, with none of the holding back I had always done before. The same approach applied with other people I knew or met. It was not that I wanted to withdraw from people, I wanted to be able to experience the same intimacy with all my fellow human beings, no matter who they were, no matter what values or beliefs they held. Actual Freedom is not about making the best of life within the human condition, ‘me’ choosing to be this and not that. Actual Freedom is about becoming free of the human condition and as such there is always a third option or choice available to the traditional approaches. In writing this I am well aware how serendipitous it was that I had a companion who was equally willing to explore all of the ingrained beliefs and deep-seated emotions that constitute the ammunition for the on-going battle of the sexes. It can be rightly said that our success in living together in utter peace and harmony was made easier by this mutual agreement that each of us was willing to look at whatever it was in ourselves that prevented each from being happy and harmless. However, there is no reason why exploring the feelings of love cannot be done in any deeply-felt relationship because the process is identical – undertaking a personal commitment to become aware of, and actively explore, one’s own beliefs, morals, ethics, values, feelings and passions as they arise. GARY: I wanted to write a post on the subject of relationships. I have been wondering just what a ‘relationship’ is and what the word means to me. So, let me pose the question: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? Are relationships important? Why? Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? Wherein does it consist? PETER: I will answer this at the bottom of the post as you have also raised similar questions later in the post. GARY: I hear many people around me talk about the importance, indeed, the primacy of having relationships in one’s life. The longer I practice actualism, the less and less important ‘relationships’ seem to be to me. This sometimes causes the reflection that I am indeed an outcast and I sometimes experience anxiety to realize that I am no longer part of any particular group, nor do I want to be. However, the anxiety is only occasional, and at other times there is this enormous sense of freedom and ease, a freedom that can only come when one is free from the obligations of being a member of a particular group, a family, a profession, a community, etc, etc. There is a tremendous comfort for me in just being alone, just sitting in my chair, for instance, doing nothing in particular. PETER: A few thoughts come to mind from my own experience. One of things I noticed when I started to abandon my spiritual beliefs was that I felt myself an outsider but I also observed that if I stopped calling my friends, they also stopped calling me. I came to realize that relationships take effort to maintain and sustain and if either party stops putting in the required effort, then relationships invariable collapse. The other aspect that I started to become aware of was that my relationships within my spiritual group were invariably based on beliefs-in-common and when I stopped believing, a large component of the emotional glue that held the relationship together also disappeared. But as actualism started to produce results, I found I was more and more content to enjoy my own company, which in turn meant I was less and less likely to seek the company of others in order to fill an emotional void or provide a relief from boredom. GARY: I seem to fluctuate between a sense of alarm and anxiety at my ‘aloneness’ and the thrill of the realization that I am really getting somewhere by using the actualism method. And where I am getting is to be completely and totally free from being a member of the human club. When I set out upon learning about an Actual Freedom, I had many basic questions, some of which persist. For instance, I wondered: will I be able to work? Will I be able to provide for myself and my partner? Will I have a social life? What will that look like? and other questions such as these. Regarding my ability to work, I have found that I am able to work, and that my capacity for work has, if anything, increased. I am better able to prioritize tasks, think things through and get done what needs to be done. PETER: Your experience regarding working for money closely mirrors my own experiences. By becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow I am not only able to work more efficiently but I am also now able to do my work much better. By no longer resenting having to work, no longer being annoyed by other people, no longer being frustrated that I do not get ‘my’ way and so on, not only am I happier but I no longer create ripples for those around me by ‘my’ incessant demands. I am now equally interested that my clients are as satisfied with my work as I am and that they get as much value for their money as I do for my time committed. The other issue with work is that I no longer seek meaning, kudos and identity from my work as I had been taught to both expect and/or demand. I am not special in what I do when I work for money – anyone can do my job and many do so, equally as well. My time spent working is what it is – selling my time and expertise to someone else in return for money to pay for food, shelter, clothes and the like. By eliminating all the beliefs and values around the issue of work a good deal of my social identity fell away – and those I work for, and with, are better off for it. The ‘will I be able to work’ issue also occurred to me when I thought about the consequences of becoming free from Humanity. But I eventually came to realize that this was a belief I had, based on my observation of those who had ‘made it’ to the top in the spiritual world and who then become incapable of functioning and working in the world and end up having to rely on the financial and emotional support of their followers or disciples for their sustenance. Need I point out that being able to more happily, sensibly and efficiently function in the world is further evidence that actualism is the antithesis of spiritualism. GARY: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to. In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed. PETER: During the first two years of practicing actualism I also experienced that my ‘friendships’ dropped away but lately I have had occasion to meet several of these former ‘friends’ and to do work for several members of the spiritual group I was in before. All of these meetings have been delightful as am now meeting fellow human beings, I am interested in them as fellow human beings and, as such, have enjoyed their company. The difference between now and before is that I now make no emotional demands of people I meet which then frees them of the burden of ‘me’, nor do I have emotional expectations of them which then frees me from the constant need to intuit and imagine what they were thinking and feeling about ‘me’. There is great significance in the phrase ‘fellow human beings’ because the only way you can begin to treat your fellow human beings as fellow human beings is to firstly demolish your own social identity. The first component that has to go is one’s spiritual identity because a Christian never meets a Buddhist as a fellow human being, a Rajneeshee never meets a Krishnamurti-ite as a fellow human being, and so on, because each have different beliefs, that make for differing identities. The very best that spiritualists can muster up is a feeling of oneness – a feeling that always fails to translate into a practical and tangible peace and harmony between members of a spiritual group, let alone between members of competing groups. Then there are other aspects of one’s social identity that demand attention if one is to ever get to the stage where one can see and treat one’s fellow human beings as fellow human beings and not continue to think and feel them to be separate ‘beings’. A man never meets a woman and sees her or treats her as a fellow human being because men and women have been instilled with opposing gender identities – identities that are mandated by each side in the battle of the sexes and are rife with mutual feelings of suspicion, fear, ignorance and superstition. Similarly, a father never meets a son and a mother never meets a daughter for each has a socially-imposed identity relative to each other – a complex set of social obligations, emotional demands and needs, expectations and resentments that serve to prevent each from either seeing or treating each other as fellow human beings. Similarly, an American never meets an Australian, a Lithuanian never meets a Nigerian and so on, for each believe they belong to a different culture and each call a particular piece of the planet ‘home’. The list goes on, but I won’t, for you will have got the gist by now. What normally happens in relationships when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, is that the each party blames the other for failing to meet their needs, fulfill their expectations, nurture them sufficiently, respect their feelings, and such like. Often a begrudging compromise is reached in relationships or failure is allowed to run its natural course. As you well know from your experience with actualism, the only way out of this mess is to demolish one’s own social identity, piece-by-piece, element-by-element. And the proof that this process works is that you begin to not only see but to treat the fellow human beings you come in contact with as exactly that – fellow human beings, regardless of their age, gender, kin, race, religion, culture, nationality, and so on. GARY: On the subject of my ‘relationship’ with my partner, the matter gets a bit stickier. Since my need to affiliate with other human beings in groups has greatly lessened, to the point of almost being totally absent, I have wondered at times if I transferred these feelings on to my partner and whether I am clinging to her to get these self-same needs met. I do enjoy our being together, and I look forward to our weekends and holidays together, even our simple presence together in the evening when the day is done is very enjoyable. To be honest: I do find myself clinging to her at times with feelings of ‘love’ and affection. Yet I can say that for every moment in which there is this feeling of love and affection, there are counterpoised moments when the invidious passions are in evidence: resentment, peevishness, annoyance. In short, malice. It increases my feeling that you cannot have the positive, loving emotions without having the whole instinctual package. At least, that’s the way I think of it at this point. In other words, the entire package needs to be deleted. So, I guess where this leaves me is to say that I think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner. It is here that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire occur most clearly and cleanly, compared to my other everyday ‘relationships’. To sum this all up: it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling. If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? These are just a couple of the questions that occur. PETER: So, if I may, I’ll now include your questions from the first part of the post, shuffle the order a bit and work my way through the list – [Gary]: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? Are relationships important? Why? Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? Wherein does it consist? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? [endquote]. To take your questions one at a time – [Gary]: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? [endquote]. If you are part of the human condition then ‘you’, as an alien-feeling psychological and psychic entity, need to relate to similar alien-feeling entities, otherwise you feel even more desperately lonely and alien. As you are discovering, the nature of this relating can only be emotive – ‘it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling.’ [Gary]: If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? [endquote]. As you actively diminish and wither both your social ‘self’ and your instinctual ‘self’ – your personality and being, or your ego and soul if you like – there is less ‘I’ and ‘me’ remaining to think and feel ‘he or ‘she’ needs or desires a relationship with other ‘he’s or ‘she’s. I am not being clever here, because if you set off on a moral or ethical course of not needing or not desiring relationships with other people – take it on as a shouldn’t – you can only end up feeling an outcast or alien or becoming a hermit and a celibate. If you do so, history shows that the emotional void that is created by this act of withdrawal will commonly be filled by the ‘discovery of a greater love and meaning – a God, by whatever name. To retreat from the world of people, things and events is to fall into the spiritual trap of withdrawal and denial which when combined with the fantasy of sublimation and transcendence leads to the pathological state of dissociation and solipsism. In actualism you go the other way – you deliberately move closer, you deliberately become more intimate whenever the opportunity arises. It is only by daring to do this can you discover the previously hidden or repressed layers of affective feelings and passions that are preventing ‘your’ demise and therefore inhibiting an actual intimacy with the world of people, things and events from occurring. [Gary]: Are relationships important? Why? [endquote]. I find relationships vitally important for me as a practicing actualist for they hold the key to becoming aware of, exploring and incrementally removing the obstacles that inhibit an actual intimacy from one’s fellow human beings. Spiritualists always put relationships with their God, or their Self, first and relationships with their fellow human beings second – but for an actualist the exact opposite is the case. For an actualist, the closer the relationship, the more valuable the relationship for only close relationships are emotive enough and powerful enough to bring to the surface the emotions that are normally suppressed or glossed-over in ‘normal’ stand-offish relating. It is good to remember that if you are avoiding something or denying something, it is impossible to experientially investigate it and this is nowhere more obvious than in discovering precisely what is preventing you from being intimate with another human being – one to one. [Gary]: Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? [endquote]. Both I and Vineeto have already written a good deal about our relationship and the explorations we made. I won’t go over this territory again but it may be relevant to note that, thus far, it seems that we are the only man and woman who are living together who have a common interest in practicing actualism. Because of this our relationship could be seen as being unique, but it is important to grasp that the process of actualism is an individual process – i.e. an actualist’s becoming happy and harmless is not in any way dependant on anyone else becoming happy and harmless. Vineeto did her thing, I did mine – we just happened to be serendipitously doing it at the same time, whilst living together. Because Vineeto and I share a common interest in actualism, the main focus of our relationship was a mutual agreement that each would investigate what stood in the way of our living together in utter peace and harmony. Once I stopped my habitual program of trying to change others to suit ‘my’ whims, moods, foibles, demands and expectations, I was then able to become aware of, and be fully responsible for, my feelings, passions and behaviour that were causing me to not be able to live with Vineeto in peace and harmony. Just to make it clear – you don’t need another’s agreement to do this work, because it is something only you can do for yourself and for others you come in contact with. It is an enormous step you take when you fully grasp the reality that expecting or demanding that your companion, wife, husband, son, daughter or whoever, should change in order to please ‘you’ is an essentially malicious intrusion – and that wanting to or trying to change them is an utterly futile exercise that can only provoke hostility and resentment. Then and only then, can you can get on with your own business of changing yourself. This does not negate the fact that you, as an actualist, can share your discoveries with a fellow human being – provided they are interested, of course. [Gary]: Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? Wherein does it consist? [endquote]. After years of effort, I am virtually free of malice and sorrow, which means I have no reason to get angry with Vineeto or feel resentful of something she may, or may not, have done because feelings of anger and resentment no longer course through my veins, as it were. Likewise, I am no longer subject to bouts of sadness nor am I overcome by a seeping melancholy at having to be here, which means I make no demands nor have any expectations that she should provide emotional support and a feeling of connection in order to fill the aching void of ‘my’ loneliness. What ‘I’ have also done, by ‘my’ own efforts, is free her of ‘my’ ungracious demands and capricious expectations and I am thus more happy for being more harmless – which in turn makes me more delightful and more fun to live with. Becoming more happy and harmless is a win-win situation – not only do I gain from the effort, but others benefit from the result, and none more so that those closest to me. [Gary]: In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? [endquote]. I can only talk about a virtual intimacy – an experience that far exceeds the ‘normal’ fickle feeling of love and so-called intimate relationships. In a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow, ‘I’ and ‘my’ thoughts and feelings are so weakened and emaciated that I am unable to impose, let alone sustain, any emotional demands or expectations on any fellow human being – let alone the one I have chosen to live with. By becoming virtually happy and harmless, I am more able to be what-I-am as opposed to ‘who’ I think and feel I am and this has resulted in an on-going, virtually constant, sense of well-being. This on-going sense of well-being in turn negates the need to constantly seek emotional succour or support from others in a vain attempt to assuage ‘my’ feelings of loneliness and alienation. In virtual freedom, there is a palpable sense of autonomy based upon the factual evidence that I am perfectly capable of looking after myself and providing for all of my needs. The overarching and debilitating sense of needing to survive has been replaced by the simple need to ensure that, when I place a plastic card in a machine downtown and type in a few numbers, that sufficient bits of paper come out to meet my food and shelter requirements. Similarly, my need for a ‘relationship’ has been replaced by the fact that I do not live alone but that I live with a companion with whom I am able to share the delight of living on this verdant planet. And not only do I get to do things together with a fellow human being that I would not have necessarily done had I been living alone, but I get to wallow in that most intimate of human one-to-one activities – the sensual mutual pleasure of sex. PETER: Just a comment with regard to your recent post on the topic of relationship. You wrote in response to Gary – GARY: On the subject of my ‘relationship’ with my partner, the matter gets a bit stickier. Since my need to affiliate with other human beings in groups has greatly lessened, to the point of almost being totally absent, I have wondered at times if I transferred these feelings on to my partner and whether I am clinging to her to get these self-same needs met. I do enjoy our being together, and I look forward to our weekends and holidays together, even our simple presence together in the evening when the day is done is very enjoyable. To be honest: I do find myself clinging to her at times with feelings of ‘love’ and affection. Yet I can say that for every moment in which there is this feeling of love and affection, there are counterpoised moments when the invidious passions are in evidence: resentment, peevishness, annoyance. In short, malice. It increases my feeling that you cannot have the positive, loving emotions without having the whole instinctual package. At least, that’s the way I think of it at this point. In other words, the entire package needs to be deleted. So, I guess where this leaves me is to say that I think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner. It is here that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire occur most clearly and cleanly, compared to my other everyday ‘relationships’. To sum this all up: it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling. If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? These are just a couple of the questions that occur. Gary to Peter, 8.2.2002 RESPONDENT: I too find that the partner relationship is where we really test the mettle. At this juncture, I don’t have the child-rearing compulsion to interfere with the simple facts of the nature of the relationship, and that has created (or exposed perhaps) some turmoil. Semi-amusing anecdote: I’ve been pondering the questions raised by my investigation into AF, particularly in the notion of ‘love’. My SO asks the loaded question ‘Do you love me?’, and I responded innocently enough ‘I’m not sure what love is’. Wrong answer. The ensuing ‘situation’ may however precipitate some earnest discussion. Without going into gory details, I did discover that some of my behaviour of late has definitely included an element of malice towards her, cloaked in an air of righteousness. PETER: I particularly like what you have discovered because it is an experiential observation and understanding of your own feelings and not a mere intellectual understanding of someone else’s experience – and there is a world of difference between the two. I particular remember how shocked I was when, despite years of spiritual practice, I became very angry over a trivial matter. It was as though a crack had suddenly opened up in my oh-so-righteous persona and, although it was an uncomfortable experience, it provided an invaluable insight into the hidden deep-seated passions that lay just under the surface. If I can elaborate a bit on your observation – what normally prevents such clear observations from occurring is the human social conditioning and the feeling of righteousness is particularly common for those who have imbibed religious or spiritual conditioning. Because of these spiritual feelings, it is extremely rare to find anyone who is capable of, let alone willing to, admit that they have malicious feelings towards others. If they do admit to feeling malicious, it is almost always cloaked in some form of self-righteous justification, as in ‘it was the other’s fault’, ‘I was simply sharing my feelings’, or even ‘I was doing it for their own good’. The other major factors that prevent such clear observations form occurring are the socially imposed feelings of guilt and shame. As children, all humans are trained to feel guilty and shameful if they think or feel wrong or evil thoughts and we subsequently learn the games of deceit and denial as a way of avoiding blame and/or punishment. Because of the tenacity of this childhood programming it is vital for an actualist to both understand and experientially observe that the feelings, emotions and passions that constantly arise are the human condition in action and not one’s personal fault. By conducting your investigations with this understanding in mind you are conducting an investigation in a hands-on scientific down-to-earth manner, free of any moral or ethical judgements of good or bad, right or wrong. By investigating the human condition in action in you – and as ‘you’ – you also avoid the traditional spiritual trap of creating yet another identity, a superior ‘real you’ who then observes a supposedly ‘illusionary you’. You will find this business of becoming aware of your social/spiritual persona is not a one-off understanding but an ongoing process. You will become continually aware of whenever you think you are right and the other is wrong, when you feel as though you are being good and the other is being bad. You will find that these feelings arise because of beliefs you have been taught to be universal truths and you will become fascinated as you unearth and acknowledge the facts of how ‘you’ have been socially and instinctually programmed to think and feel. Of course, you have to be sure that this is what you want to do with your life, because once you launch yourself into this process you will never be the same again. RESPONDENT: I’m starting to see that it is always ‘happy and harmless’, it’s a package deal. PETER: Again, this is one of the most crucial understandings in actualism and one that clearly separates it from all of the past failed methods to find a way to become free of malice and sorrow. The pursuit of happiness has been a long and fruitless search thus far for human beings solely because everyone has put their own happiness first and being harmless second – if being harmless gets a look in at all, that is. Once you begin to observe in yourself the malicious element of merely pursuing your own happiness you also begin to see that it is normal behaviour within the human condition, i.e. everybody blames someone else for being the cause of their unhappiness and blaming others can only be a malicious act. And then you begin to see that this ultimately ‘self’-centred focus on ‘my’ happiness is why human beings do not, and cannot, live together in peace and harmony. Speaking personally, it was the desire to be harmless that attracted me to begin the process of actualism and it was the desire to be harmless that has provided all of the impetus to push on beyond the limits of the measly ‘self’-centred pursuit of happiness only. RESPONDENT: In chewing through this recent lab experiment, I also came to understand something that Vineeto had stated a while back that has been puzzling me. She stated that true intimacy is unilateral. By our sociological definition, intimacy (or rather its alter ego – love) is bilateral, requiring two or more cooperating participants. True intimacy cannot require the involvement of another person for its fruition, as that immediately creates a ‘relationship’ with its attendant rules, roles, and expectations, rather than the simplicity/ clarity/ honesty of an individual bringing happiness and harmlessness to the table. PETER: What I soon discovered in my first months of actualism was if there is going to be peace on earth between human beings then it was up to ‘me’ and it had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. This understanding can be a daunting challenge because once you let it in completely you put yourself on the spot, as it were. What ‘I’ did was take up the challenge and make becoming actually happy and harmless my primary aim in life and put everything else second. ‘I’ saw that it was the very best thing ‘I’ could do with my life. Every other challenge paled into insignificance – others could pursue security, wealth and fame if they wanted to, others could pursue immortality for their souls if they wanted to, but ‘my’ work became the real pioneering work inherent in the pursuit of an actual freedom from malice and sorrow. I like what you have reported because it is your own observation of your own feelings, in other words it is an experiential understanding of what has been reported by Richard and the other actualists. As you would know from your own life experience, an experiential understanding based on hands-on experience is far superior to an intellectual understanding of the words of others. No amount of intellectual understanding can substitute for hands-on experience, and the only way to become free of malice and sorrow is to become aware of all of the nuances of malice and sorrow in action in your own psyche, and as your own psyche. GARY: Yes, I can see the importance of relationships, particularly very close relationships, for an actualist. In normal, everyday relating to others in society, the rules of fair play as expressed through ordinary morality, values, and ethics often take precedence. But in relating to one’s mate or partner, often one’s instinctual behaviour is laid bare, with the full range of selfishness and greediness occurring. It is not for no reason that in the large majority of marriages, statistically for instance, there is at least one episode of actual physical violence at some point. In normal society, for instance, one can often put one’s best foot forward and be an exemplary citizen, so to speak, yet at home be a perfect beast and a dreadful rogue. One’s mate knows things about one that nobody else knows because they live in close proximity and see the ‘real’ person. I have no doubt that it people wanted to know what I am ‘really’ like, they should ask my intimate partner, for she is the one who spends the most time with me. That is why the closer relationship is the acid test of actualism. The so-called intimate relationship is going to be the test ground of the actualism method – if one cannot live in peace and harmony with one’s intimate partner one is neither happy nor harmless. PETER: The challenge that really got my head out of the clouds was Richard’s comment that ‘if you can’t live with one other person in utter peace and harmony then life on earth is a sick joke’. It was a statement of such obvious fact that it made me see that my waiting for someone else or something else to bring about peace on earth, or my wanting to be anywhere else but here, was an absolute cop-out. Serendipitously, ‘I’ took it as a challenge to turn what was but dream into an actuality. * PETER: Both I and Vineeto have already written a good deal about our relationship and the explorations we made. I won’t go over this territory again but it may be relevant to note that, thus far, it seems that we are the only man and woman who are living together who have a common interest in practicing actualism. Because of this our relationship could be seen as being unique, but it is important to grasp that the process of actualism is an individual process – i.e. an actualist’s becoming happy and harmless is not in any way dependant on anyone else becoming happy and harmless. Vineeto did her thing, I did mine – we just happened to be serendipitously doing it at the same time, whilst living together. GARY: Your situation does seem quite unique. I should think it would be a good deal more revealing to be in a relationship with someone who is investigating these things because they are ‘raising the bar’ as well as you. While contemplating it a bit, though, it does seem like it would be a lot easier to be happy and harmless with an intimate partner who is happy and harmless, rather than a partner who is peevish and resentful. PETER: My experience with the process of actualism is that the appropriate circumstances are always available to either begin or sustain your own investigation as to ‘how’ you tick. In fact, the only time one can make this investigation is right now, in the circumstances you find yourself in now. Given that there is very little variation in social conditioning within the human condition and the animal instinctual programming of the species is identical, every actualist will be investigating common-to-all issues, no matter where they are, if they live with someone or live alone, if they are male or female, black or white, young or old, rich or poor, and so on. To blame one’s lot in life, to see others as more able or better equipped, or more fortunate or whatever is but ‘me’ objecting to very considerable challenge of becoming happy and harmless. GARY: I am aware at times that my partner’s negative moods get me down, yet this alone is fertile ground for investigating what is standing in the way of my being happy and harmless, as I agree that becoming happy and harmless should in no way be dependent on someone else’s behaviour or moods. In any ‘normal’ relationship, there seem to be powerful expectations and beliefs at work, as two people have formed a pact and come together, sometimes with the most unrealistic expectations imaginable, and it is no wonder that these relationships do not work out, as love has brought together essentially two strangers who, once loves’ rosy glow wears off, stand confronting each other and wondering ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ PETER: I remember seeing normal relationships as being similar to the three-legged races that were popular picnic games when I was a kid. The idea was that you and a partner tied two legs together with strips of cloth, put an arm around each other’s shoulders and then tried to run faster than other three-legged couples. * PETER: Because Vineeto and I share a common interest in actualism, the main focus of our relationship was a mutual agreement that each would investigate what stood in the way of our living together in utter peace and harmony. Once I stopped my habitual program of trying to change others to suit ‘my’ whims, moods, foibles, demands and expectations, I was then able to become aware of, and be fully responsible for, my feelings, passions and behaviour that were causing me to not be able to live with Vineeto in peace and harmony. Just to make it clear – you don’t need another’s agreement to do this work, because it is something only you can do for yourself and for others you come in contact with. It is an enormous step you take when you fully grasp the reality that expecting or demanding that your companion, wife, husband, son, daughter or whoever, should change in order to please ‘you’ is an essentially malicious intrusion – and that wanting to or trying to change them is an utterly futile exercise that can only provoke hostility and resentment. Then and only then, can you can get on with your own business of changing yourself. This does not negate the fact that you, as an actualist, can share your discoveries with a fellow human being – provided they are interested, of course. GARY: I must say that I don’t think I have fully grasped the reality that expecting or demanding that the other change is a malicious intrusion, as I have not completely ceased expecting or demanding. I would like to stop, however, as it is no fun whatsoever expecting or demanding anything of anybody. Thus, my relationship with my ‘significant other’ is precisely the place where these expectations and demands can be examined and uncovered. I know through my own experience that it is possible to live without these expectations and demands, as I have had this happen for brief periods of time, and it is most delicious. During these ‘self’-less interludes, one’s normal petty expectations and demands are nowhere in evidence. It must require extremely pure intent to continue on and demolish all of these so-called ‘normal’ expectations of intimate relationships. PETER: It is no small thing to break with the habit of meddling in the lives of others because it is an activity that is universal within the human condition. The psychological and psychic bonds that tie human beings together condemns everyone to think and feel they have to live vicariously through others, via relationship and contracts, comparison and competition with others. The resulting cycle of expectations and disappointments, doubts and suspicions, demands and conflicts as well as hope and despair the ensues from ‘normal’ human relationships means that people are always friend or foe, with me or against me, right or wrong, good or bad, and so on – anything but fellow human beings. When you say that you ‘haven’t yet fully grasped the reality that expecting or demanding that the other change is a malicious intrusion’ I can understand this totally. The whole process of actualism is a step-by-step process of extracting yourself from the human condition and it is my experience that the most difficult aspect of this process is breaking free of the social and passionate bonds that tie people together. It is this passionate and instinctual involvement in the lives of others that directly leads us to inevitably expect or demand that others change – that ‘I am right and you are wrong’, that ‘you’re hurting my feelings’, that ‘I need to stand up for my rights’, that ‘I want you to respect my wishes/ opinion/ feelings’, and so on. The only way to fully grasp ‘the reality that expecting or demanding that the other change is a malicious intrusion’ as an experience and not merely an intellectual understanding, is to be actually free of the human condition. The process of actualism is a step-by-step process of experiencing, becoming attentive to and cutting the emotional ties and passionate bonds that give substance to ‘me’ as a social identity and as an instinctual being. You don’t step out of humanity and leave your ‘self’ behind in one step – it takes many steps to get from A to B. But the longer you practice actualism, the more bits of your social and instinctual identity fall by the wayside, as it were, which in turn means the less you demand, expect or hope that others change. But as you point out, you do get tangible rewards on the way for your persistence and patience. PETER: Hi Gary & No 38, I’d just like to add my comment to your discussion about relationships. GARY: I think I also experienced a momentary feeling of pity for my partner whose expressions of ‘love’ to me are usually not reciprocated, perhaps in they are in tender expressions of caring but certainly not in word, as I never speak the ‘love’ word anymore. I think there was an irrational belief operating in me at the time that went something like this: ‘What kind of partner are you after all – you should be telling your partner that you love her’. One could easily substitute any number of words in the place of ‘partner’ such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘friend’, ‘coworker’, etc. The irrational belief that I ‘should’ be expressing love to these people caused me to feel momentary sadness, regret, and guilt. Gary to No 46, 4.10.2002 RESPONDENT: I had found myself in a very similar position a while back, and it provided plenty of (painful) opportunity for observation. I think I came out of it with increased clarity, but one question still remains: Unlike Vineeto/Peter, I am not in a relationship with that level of shared determination and application. We do, however have a certain degree of caring for each other. It does give her pleasure to hear the word ‘love’ come out of my mouth towards her. Is it not reasonable to provide her that pleasure on occasion? Is it likely that we have been working through the whole concept of ‘love’, and as it slowly releases its iron grip, it is being reduced to merely a word? And in withholding this pleasure to others, we are hanging on to our concept of ‘love’? PETER: I thought it might be useful to this particular discussion to explain my initial interest in actualism and how and why I came to be living with Vineeto. Although I have told the story in my Journal, most people who have read the story manage to misunderstand, misinterpret or re-interpret it. When I first came across Richard I spent a good deal of time checking out the sensibility of his story, as well as checking out whether he lived what he talked. I eventually got to the stage where the story made sense and, unlike those I had followed on the spiritual path, it was clear to me that he lived what he talked. As I found myself becoming more and more interested in actualism I found myself faced with a dilemma. How best to road-test actualism in order to find out if the method worked in practice? Previous to this time I had been full-on on the spiritual path, was not in a relationship, had lived in shared houses for several years and had spent the last year living alone. It was in this latter monk-like period that I gradually lost my grip on reality and had a substantial Satori experience – a glimpse of what enlightenment would be like. It occurred to me that if I continued to live alone then it would be very easy to treat actualism as a philosophy or a belief and the danger was that I would go tripping off into all sorts of fantasies as I had done in my spiritual period. However, as I have said often before, what really challenged me was Richard’s comment in the Introduction to his Journal – Richard: ‘I started from a basic premise that if man and woman could not live together with nary a bicker – let alone a quarrel – then the universe was indeed a sick joke.’ There was such a blindingly obvious sensibility to this statement that I decided that this too would be my starting point in actualism. In making this decision, I knew I would be testing actualism not only in an utterly down-to-earth arena – one-on-one male-female relationship – but one that Eastern spiritualism failed to address. The appeal of this method of testing actualism was that, whilst I knew from experience I could very happily live by myself, I preferred to live with a companion. I had always wanted to understand the nature of the odious gender divide and I had always wanted to be free from sexual inhibitions as well as instinctive sexual predatoriness. Deep-down I knew that if I wanted to be happy and harmless in the world-as-it, with people as-they-are, then the big issues in life had to be tackled and understood – not dismissed, denied or avoided. And one of the really big issues was man and woman living together in utter peace and harmony. So it could be said that my deliberately finding a companion with whom to road-test the actualism method only meant I was catching up to where you guys started – faced with the challenge of living with at least one other person in utter peace and harmony. From feedback over the years, it is clear that many people have misunderstood the nature of this challenge. It is not about waiting for, or demanding, that the other person changes – that they become happy and harmless in order that you can be. Nor is it about waiting for some like-minded person to come magically wandering into your life in order for you to change. Everybody who comes across actualism starts from where they are now, in the life circumstances they find themselves in. If you are already with a companion, then that is where you start, if you are alone, that is where you start. No matter what age, culture, gender, life experience or life circumstances – if you want to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, then right now is always the time to start and right here is the place to start. This is not to say that you may not want to change your life circumstances in order to make life easier – contrary to popular belief there is no virtue in suffering – or that you may want to take on an adventure or a challenge of some sort. But no matter what an actualist’s life circumstances are, his or her main priority in life will always be to be happy and harmless right now. I do remember that I spent a lot of time comparing my life experience and life circumstances with Richard’s. Eventually I came to see that making such comparisons was a red herring because my life experiences and life circumstances are what has happened as a fact and what is happening now as a fact. The only salient thing that stood out in Richard’s stories of his time before he became actually free was his whole-hearted intent and stubborn persistence to explore every avenue of his psyche in his quest to become actually free from the human condition – to leave no stone unturned, as it were. Just to add another thought to the discussion that might be relevant. The last century has seen a remarkable revolution in women redefining their traditional social/gender roles and this seems to have left many men bemused about their own social/gender role. Whilst many women are now refusing to play the role of slave in their relationships, men generally seem reluctant to dare to take the same step. My own experience is that this social/gender programming, both the male and female, needed to be scrupulously examined in order that I could become free of the effects of both. These investigations were an oft-confronting business because there is a lot of darkness hidden beneath the generally well-meant goodness – however the tangible rewards far exceed the unfulfilled and fickle promise of love. By putting becoming happy and harmless as a higher priority to hanging on to the mores, habits and hopes of a traditional man-woman relationship, I am now able to relate to women as fellow human beings and not members of the ‘opposite sex’ – not only the woman I choose to live with, but all women. PETER: I thought it might be useful to this particular discussion to explain my initial interest in actualism and how and why I came to be living with Vineeto. Although I have told the story in my Journal, most people who have read the story manage to misunderstand, misinterpret or re-interpret it. GARY: Although you did not address me specifically, and I have read your account of your partnership with Vineeto, I do not think I have misunderstood that part of your Journal. Although it has been awhile since I first read about it, I think looking back on it that it is a delightful 'courtship' story of sorts...and I think of it in light of many interesting stories of couples when they first meet and the reasons they form a union to begin with. My own partnership, although not formed for reasons of living in harmony and happiness in so explicit a manner, and to which neither of the participants brought an interest in Actualism, was also a courtship of sorts and perhaps for many of the same reasons. I too was dissatisfied with my lot of failed and disastrous love life pairings. From a marriage in my twenties in which I kept my then wife a virtual hostage to dazzling and passionate sexual unions which inevitably seemed to suddenly go sour, leaving me in a state of abject misery and abandonment, I too was looking for something different – a whole different type of relationship from those I had known in the past. Into this uncharted territory I bravely sallied forth, and I can say that my present alliance has been much, much more satisfying although lacking the dizzying heights of passion and desire that previous relationships had when I was younger. Not that I regret that fact ... far from it ... I ran awreck on the reefs of passion and desire and so did not want to repeat those mistakes again. PETER: Yes. I had 3 failed relationships and figured that it was impossible for any man and woman to live together in peace and harmony without begrudging compromises. And this resignation came not only from my own personal experiences but from observation of ever man-woman relationship I had seen or read about. When I became an actualist I found this cynical attitude was no longer acceptable to me. One of the most important admissions I came to make was that I was at least equally at fault in causing the past failures of my relationships. This meant that in trying again, I was determined this time to not hold back – to give it my all. I knew that nothing short of 100% commitment on my part would bring success. Only by making a hundred percent commitment could I be certain that it would be no fault of mine if living together with a new partner in peace and harmony did not work out. Exactly the same intent would also have applied if I had already been living with someone at the time I decided to become an actualist. I would have wanted to stop holding back and fully commit myself to the task of living in utter peace with that person. This would have meant I would have changed myself such that I stopped being grumpy, moody, resentful, burdensome, demanding, distanced, aloof and so on – i.e. that I was no longer being a burden on the person that I choose to live with. And, if there had not been a woman I had been attracted to as a companion, then I would have started the process of living in peace and harmony with friends, colleagues at work or family members simply because it makes good sense to start with those closest. After all, the challenge in actualism is to be able to live with one’s fellow human beings in utter peace and harmony – not as a theory or a philosophy, nor as a hope or a ‘self’-aggrandizing imaginary feeling, but as an actuality, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. * PETER: However, as I have said often before, what really challenged me was Richard’s comment in the Introduction to his Journal – ‘I started from a basic premise that if man and woman could not live together with nary a bicker, let alone a quarrel, then the universe was indeed a sick joke.’ There was such a blindingly obvious sensibility to this statement that I decided that this too would be my starting point in actualism. GARY: Here your experience is definitely different than mine. The fact that there have been many bickers along the way in my relationship initially produced, when reading this comment, a sheepish feeling of disappointment and failure in me, which I relate to your comment about comparing your experience to others. While having a relationship with nary a bicker I regard as both a theoretical and practical possibility, the simple fact is that there have been bickers in my union with present partner. However, as I recognize that it takes two to bicker...it being impossible for one person to bicker in a relationship unless there another person to bicker back, I regard these times of strife as opportunities to look into precisely what is causing my discomfiture. I also think that it is important to take on Richard’s statement about relationships as a practical necessity if a man and woman are to live in peace and harmony and not take it on as another failed ideal or as a prescription for ‘how’ things should be. I’ve had it through and through with ideals that I measure my life up against and then inevitably am unable to measure up to these impossible standards. In Actualism, we are not setting up a code of conduct (I think Vineeto used this expression) for behaviour, nor are we holding forth pie-in-the-sky ideals, but a relationship with nary a bicker does seem like the ultimate pipe dream and the acid test of one’s intent in living happily and harmlessly. I find it quite useful to hold this before myself, so to speak, and realize that within the microcosm of the ‘intimate’ relationship or partnership is re-enacted the whole drama of humankind and that if I wish to live in harmony with those about me, what goes on at home is the proving ground. Not to diminish the importance of, say, how I get along with people at work. PETER: I think my comment above relates to the fact that, while you and I and others have had different life experiences and have different living circumstances, the over-arching challenge facing each and every human being is to be able to actually live in peace and harmony with all of one’s fellow human beings. For this to happen it is obvious that one needs to put actualizing peace on earth above one’s own ‘self’-centred beliefs and ‘self’-centred survival passions. * PETER: Everybody who comes across actualism starts from where they are now, in the life circumstances they find themselves in. If you are already with a companion, then that is where you start, if you are alone, that is where you start. No matter what age, culture, gender, life experience or life circumstances – if you want to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, then right now is always the time to start and right here is the place to start. GARY: I certainly agree with this statement. I think it matters not who or where you are ... right now is the time to start. That my partner is more enamoured of the Human Condition than I am ... matters not so far as what I am doing. We have some interesting conversations about things and I find there are some interesting points of contact, times when we are sharing our experiences and thoughts with one another, wholly without artifice or device. These conversations are a great satisfaction because we are talking about what it means to be human and what the Human Condition is about (I am apt to frame it broadly in this way, where my partner is not) and feel our way through it. There is a naive quality to these talks of ours, and I think you have to start with a basic naivete (oops, I don’t know how to make those little French accent marks) in order to arrive at that level of dialogue. PETER: Yes. And when you get to the stage of living peacefully with your partner as-she-is – without gracelessly demanding that she should change to suit your ideas, whims and moods – then the same naïve conversations can occur with any human being. As for those little French accent marks, if you write your letters in MS Word then all sorts of odd hieroglyphics are available by using ‘Insert’ – ‘Symbol’. * PETER: This is not to say that you may not want to change your life circumstances in order to make life easier – contrary to popular belief there is no virtue in suffering – or that you may want to take on an adventure or a challenge of some sort. But no matter what an actualist’s life circumstances are, his or her foremost priority in life will always be to be happy and harmless right now. GARY: When you think about it, what better opportunity is there than living in close proximity with another human being, ‘living together’, to take on the dare of living happy and harmless right now? PETER: There is lot contained in the phrase Richard uses – ‘to be free to be happy and harmless – in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are’. Not happy and harmless in some mythical afterlife or some utopian future but right now, in the world as-it-is. And not a freedom conditional upon retreating from the world or on feeling superior to others but a freedom from any skerrick of malice and sorrow in all of one’s dealings with all of the people one comes in contact with. Only recently an incident bought home to me that my own feelings of malice and sorrow are inseparable from the feelings and passions that cause all the wars, rapes, murders, torture, child abuse and domestic violence amongst the human species. Someone said something about my work that caused me to take offence and because I was sufficiently aware of my reaction I did not react at the time. I did however stew over it a bit later for a while until I was able to get back once more to feeling excellent. The very next day a different person became angry with me, again about a work issue, and I could see clearly that my reaction of feeling offended was of the very same ilk as his anger – both reactions were rooted in instinctive ‘self’-centred reactions, be they defensive or offensive. What was startlingly clear to me from this incident was that it is impossible for ‘me’ to become actually happy and harmless – innocence personified – because ‘I’ am at root a malicious and sorrowful being. I remember a distinct feeling of shock – ‘what have I got myself into’ that demands ‘my’ demise in order for there to be a successful outcome. But then again I reminded myself that thinking and feeling oneself to be a separate alien entity is a weird and perverse business – the anguish and animosity that exemplifies the human condition readily testifies to this fact. There is no question whatsoever of going back to being normal – that is an impossibility because I have come too far to accept compromise, let alone consider failure. ‘A stubborn refusal to settle for second best’ is how I would describe the intent to see this process through to its natural completion. As I see it, this stubborn intent is what overcomes the glue-like inertia to stay with the herd and not change and this stubborn intent is what will eliminate the impulse of ‘self’-preservation and ‘self’-perpetuation produced by the instinctual animal survival programming. Well that’s it for now. Nice to chat again. PETER to Gary: Nice to hear that you are back on-line again. I thought I would write to the list about a few aspects of the human condition that became obvious to me in my day to day living over the past weeks. As you would know from your own experience, it is one thing to read something that say Richard has said about some aspect of the human condition but it is another to confirm it as fact by your own observations of others. However a bona fide significance and life-changing consequences only come when you become attentive as to how that particular aspect of the human condition operates in you, as ‘you’, a thinking and feeling entity – be it as a feeling or as a compulsion, be it manifested either as a covert action or am overt action. In other words, it is only the decisive act of attentiveness, or ‘self’-awareness, of the human condition in operation, when combined with sincerity, is the ending of, i.e. the freedom from, that particular aspect of the human condition. Because I am a seasoned practicing actualist, nowadays most of my observations serve as reminders of how much I have changed since starting this business – of how much of the human condition I have become free of over the years. I do like these reminders because they clearly point to an inevitable end to a process that, whilst seeming so daunting at the start, has proved to be surprisingly straightforward. The first observation I had was about ‘relationships’ – the man-woman, living-together type. I was laying back in bed with Vineeto the other night, enjoying a particular intimate moment, when I realized the intimacy I was enjoying was the result of going into the relationship fully, of not holding back, of not settling for anything less than the very best. This continually ‘leaning forward’ rather than holding back was the only way I came to discover what was preventing me from experiencing the exquisite intimacy of the day to day peaceful living with a fellow human being. I say this because it is only by intrepidly going beyond the much-vaunted idealism and feelings of love that I managed to discover not only the guileful constraints that love inevitably imposes on both lover and loved, but also the dark underbelly of passions that love attempts to repress. This ‘holding back’ can take many subtle or not-so subtle forms. Taking ‘space’, remaining aloof, being cool, feeling emotionally, intellectually or spiritually superior, detaching from or suppressing one’s feelings, accepting one’s lot, surrendering, withdrawing, and so on. Whilst the games played are many and varied, the end result is the same – staying as you are, denying the opportunity of change and missing out on the opportunity of investigating what is standing in the way of the changes you know are needed for an authentic intimacy to happen. The risk associated with this type of ‘self’-investigation is that the subsequent change it evokes means that one is no longer the same person one was when one entered into the relationship and this could well cause consternation and disquiet in one’s companion. What pushed me on past this point was a genuine caring for my companion in that I did not want to continue to subject her to my graceless demands and my fickle moods – after all, it was I who wanted to live with her in utter peace and harmony and to demand that she aspire to do the same would have been to completely miss the point of actualism. I was also reminded at the time of something I had written in the Glossary Feeling — Physical sensibility other than sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell. The condition of being emotionally affected or committed; an emotion (of fear, hope, etc.). Emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies. A belief not based solely on reason; an attitude, a sentiment. Oxford Dictionary Peter: The three ways a person can experience the world are: 1: cerebral (thoughts); 2: sensate (senses); 3. affective (feelings). The arising of of instinctually-sourced feelings produces a hormonal chemical response in the body, which can lead to the false assumption that they are actual. Given that the base feelings are malice and sorrow (sadness, resentment, hate, depression, melancholy, loneliness, etc.) we desperately seek relief in the ‘good’ feelings (love, trust, compassion, togetherness, friendship, etc.). To live life as a ‘feeling being’ is to be forever tossed on a raging sea, hoping for an abatement to the storm. Finally, after a particularly fierce storm, one ‘ties up in port’ to sit life out in safety or putters around in the shallows, so as not to face another storm again. We are but victims of our impassioned feelings – but they can be eliminated. Feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts and, as such, we can free ourselves of their grip upon us. Usually we divide emotions into groupings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and try either to repress or deny the bad ones – fear and aggression – while giving full vent and validity to the good ones – nurture and desire. Unfortunately this attempt to curb fear and aggression has had no success as is evidenced by the all the wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, corruption, suicide, despair and loneliness that is still endemic on the planet. Love and hate, compassion and selfishness, etc. come inseparably in pairs as is testified by the continual failure of humans to live together in anything remotely resembling peace and harmony. The Actual Freedom Trust Glossary The ‘tie up in port’ bit particularly seemed appropriate for it is descriptive of what most regard as having a good relationship within the human condition – having found someone to ‘tie up in port’ with so you won’t be alone in old age. PETER: Hi Irene, I’ve been following your correspondence with Vineeto with interest, but as you are beginning to not only present your philosophy but bend a few facts in the process I thought it time I responded. So a few words in reply to some statements of yours: IRENE: Now, although you may be convinced that Richard is not an authority for you (‘because he says so himself’) why don’t your words and attitude bear that out? Why do you put into practice his methods, aim for the state he is in, defend him and criticise others using his words and phraseology and prove him to be right by your own experiences? Is it possible that you may not be aware that this is actually the classic indication of following an authority? The ‘born-again’ Christians show the same behaviour, so did most of the German subjects of Hitler, or Sannyasins or ‘students’ of Barry Long, Andrew Cohen, Adida (or whatever his name is this week!) etc. PETER: I find it amazing that you of all people would wheel out this thorny old accusation of us being mere blind followers of a Divine Master (I assume that was what was meant by the use of bold letters in the passage above) and that you further equate this with following Hitler. It is really quite a simple matter for me. Throughout my life I have tried to make sense of being a human being on the planet, why we humans are as we are, and how I could find a way to be free of fear, which I have experienced as the ground of all malice and sorrow. I rejected the claims of the spiritual freedoms as I discovered that they involved a swanning off into an imaginary inner world of love and bliss. Then I came across a man and a woman about my age who had obviously taken their investigations much further than I had, so I thought what they were saying was worth checking out. Now I was at a stage that I wouldn’t have cared who was offering this different approach (man or woman – in fact I got as much from you as I did from Richard in the early days). I liked how Richard was as a human being – happy and harmless – and I liked how he was with you (and how you were with him) and decided to test out his words rather than merely believe him. The point was he was saying something different than all the other Gurus, he had nothing to hide and would talk and discuss anything. There was nothing unspoken, nothing sacred or secret. Given that I had followed a few Masters and discovered first hand the duplicity and deceit, the power and authority, the surrender and blind trust of disciple-hood and its consequences, I was wary in the extreme of Guru-ship. I had looked up to them (and loved them) as Mentors, wise men and someone to emulate in my life. But after 16 years I could no longer turn away from how they were as men, how they were with women, sex and power. The last thing I wanted was to be an Enlightened One – they were not worthy of emulation as I had a few ‘backstage’ glimpses of their ‘private’ life in my time. What impressed me most at the time was the obvious peace and harmony that existed between you two and the depths of investigation you had undertaken into the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. So check it out I did and was so impressed that it worked that I wanted to write a journal of my process in case someone else was interested. I have not heard even you deny that I now live in peace and harmony with Vineeto, but then again you will probably say we are only pretending. That you have now turned away from what you experienced and talked to me about for hours and hours is your business. I simply see that you abandoned the chance for peace and harmony and equity for love, sorrow and woman’s liberation. The concept of Guru-ship and Divine Masters is so ingrained in us as to forever hobble us to their energy and power, and blind us to the consideration of something genuine, something free of power and authority. I know personally as I had to battle and eliminate in me the subtle (and often not so subtle) seduction of becoming yet another authority, yet another saviour. Actual freedom is not about surrendering your will to some higher authority, quite the opposite if you read the words. One needs all the will one can muster to go against all that has been held to be wise or sacred up until now. IRENE: Living with Richard made it eventually clear to me that it is not nature that is to blame but the overlaid male interpretation of human life; how it should be instead! In other words knowing better than nature the universe itself. I don’t have to explain to you how every culture and religion (all invented by male minds, based on their interpretation of how life should be organised and regulated for women as well) denigrates particular aspects of our natural faculties and have tried to suppress them, repress them, to forbid them and demand that they must be changed into unnatural behaviour and beliefs, in order to keep the male supremacy intact. In most cultures and religions we can observe, for instance, that sex was the culprit – it had to be either repressed completely (like the catholic priests) or limited to the wishes of the man only. In both scenarios a shocking amount of victims were created: repressed sexuality reveals itself in perversity, as is more and more exposed in the use of young children by grown men for their own benefit only and to the detriment of many, many children, as they were made helpless and guilty by intimidation and threats. The other alternative was the licence granted to men over women and girls by cultural and religious authorities, whereby women and girls are seen as just cattle, for the men to use as they please. It lies all in the mistake of man believing himself to be the authority over woman, as was decreed by their ancestors who were to be believed to be in direct contact with a creator-god. If men and women will ever want to live in peace and harmony, the very root-cause must be addressed: a law can only be fair if both genders define that law, not only men. But men would not voluntarily choose to share all responsibilities and rights with women, because they are too proud of and too used to their supremacy, plus they would – quite understandably! – feel afraid that they might become redundant altogether, once women were given the chance to have equal say in the decision-making processes that are necessary for the organization of all men, women and children into a peaceful and fair living together. PETER: I find myself bewildered in the face of the depth of resentment women have towards men. As a man said to me the other day: ‘Do they want us to wear skirts?’ As you say above ‘they feel afraid that they might become redundant altogether, once women were given the chance to have an equal say in decision making processes’. This seems a statement not about equity at all but about justice which is but a nice word for revenge. Your Matrilineal dreams are of a Golden Age when women ruled over men and there was supposedly peace on earth. There seems to be a lack of understanding among women of the suffering and sorrow that men experience. This is understandable, as the instinctual male role is one of provider and protector. As such he displays courage, bravado and strength to impress the female. In her selection of a mate this is what she demands, albeit sub-consciously, in many cases. This instinctual behaviour has resulted in the typical male displays of toughness, competitiveness and aggression, essential for the hunter and protector in the past and still played out in sport, business, politics and unfortunately in war. It is simply the male role – as it is the role of the female to procreate, mother and nurture and be protected. This leads directly to the assumption that all violence is the fault of the male and women are but innocent victims. And yet it is the men who are still expected to die for family or country. The other common belief is that men are not emotional or feeling ‘beings’. I had thought I had experienced the full gamut of human emotions and wrote a lot about them in my journal, smugly thinking I had not repressed anything. But recently when I stuck my head into fear to see if I was maybe avoiding something I found more. Beyond fear I discovered stark terror, angst and a dread the like of which I have never experienced before or want to experience again. I had previously, at the death of my son, experienced a form of dread that I would describe as personal, but this dread was as though I was experiencing the dread of humanity – every tortured soul, every rape, every horror, every fear. It literally tore my heart out as I realised what lay at the very core of my ‘being’ and every other being – I had tapped the very source of human psychic fear – the psychic opposite of the Divine Love and Bliss of Enlightenment. So maybe this will illustrate the point as to why I truck little with those who accuse men of having no feelings. Feelings rule and ruin the lives of both men and women equally; this is my experience. After a near fatal illness, my father deliberately went back to work with the avowed intention of at least leaving something to my mother – he died two years later and she got a house. One night I witnessed a car crash. Going to help I was confronted with a seriously injured teenager who muttered over and over through the blood ‘she left me, she left me’. I have suffered from the fear of getting a girl pregnant and of being forced to become a husband and provider in my teens and as such was a fearful bumbling virgin when married. I have suffered heartbreak, jealousy, dependency, loneliness – need I go on? RESPONDENT: So I have now modified the question to ‘Am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This has been quite useful in reminding me to experience rather than feel this moment. PETER: Well, I did it the opposite way. I became vitally interested in ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ And if that meant I was feeling angry, sad, melancholy, lacklustre, depressed, then I would track back to find out what it was that bought on that feeling. What was said, what happened, when did it happen? I wanted to understand feelings, their source, how they worked, what caused them to kick in, etc. Only by understanding them, could I begin to get free of their insidious grip. I also knew that until I was rid of the source of feelings entirely – ‘me’ – I would have to live with them. So best to understand them and best to aim for the felicitous and innocuous ones – and feeling happy and feeling harmless are surely the best one can aim for of the feelings. RESPONDENT: In fact, for some time, I was also trying to do the same as you described. The problem was that I was already feeling happy most of the time. This happiness was generated by ‘winning’ over most bad feelings, by simple spiritual techniques like Vipassana and deep breathing. Indeed, compared to most people around me, I was much happier. But I was finding myself stuck with this and somehow I had a feeling that there was nothing positive about it. It was just an absence of ‘bad’ feelings. Especially when I realized the trap of love and gratitude. But now with this the direct experience in my fold, I decided not to worry about ‘me’ being happy or not. Instead, let me enjoy whatever moments I am able to, of sensate experiencing. Perhaps it is too early. It may be just be a childish enthusiasm on my part. Let me see how long it lasts. PETER: For me the clue was in my aim to be happy and harmless. Even in my spiritual days I wouldn’t have described myself as unhappy. Probably that I was reasonably happy, particularly when things were going well. But what I had to admit, almost force myself to admit, was that I was not harmless. Well-meaning, yes, but when push came to shove, or when things weren’t going my way – certainly not harmless. My inability to live with a woman in peace and harmony was ample testimony to this fact. When I read Richard’s journal for the first time it was the first chapters on ‘living together’, ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ that pricked up my ears. It was to prove to be my test of fire. I asked myself a simple question. ‘Could I live with a woman in peace and harmony?’ The honest answer was ‘no’. The next question was – ‘Why not?’ The answer to that question took me off on a 12 month investigation into the beliefs, emotions, passions instinctual programming, morals and ethics of gender, sex and living together. As a man, I was fascinated to discover the extent that my social and biological programming actively conspired to prevent anything remotely resembling intimacy – hence the need for the feeling of love to bridge the chasm. As a practical example – the feelings of male superiority, again the result both of social and instinctual programming, was a shocking thing to discover in myself – but it is universally a part of the Human Condition. It is a belief, covertly reinforced by men, and it is a feeling but not a fact, and therefore possible to eliminate. It proved, for me, to be a large and necessary step to live with a woman in peace, harmony and equity. This step towards intimacy was the direct result of being in touch with my feelings. Actualism is the practical implementation of scientifically and historically proven facts – a radical departure from the myth of spiritual celibacy, transcendence and ‘watching’. It is implementation, not avoidance. It is involvement, not detachment. It is change and action, not acceptance and procrastination. It is sensible, not silly. So, to be reasonably happy is relatively easy. To be totally harmless – to have no instinctual fear or aggression – to be actually free of malice and sorrow is an evolutionary leap. The stakes are high in this game ... but so are the rewards. I am not at all discouraging you from ‘enjoy(ing) whatever moments I am able to, of sensate experiencing’ – quite the contrary. What I am pointing to is a way of having more of those moments and then stringing more of them together and one day being able to live that way 24 hrs. a day every day – in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: As Vineeto has said before, I am usually aware of myself made up with human relationship around me. To say further, I am usually experiencing my self as feelings to relationship around me. And I see that these feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts which are reactions to other people’s behaviours and words. I usually interpret them whether it’s good for me or not. And when I can interpret them as good for me, I have a good feeling. And when I cannot, I have a bad feeling. Then I try to find another interpretation which can make me have a good feeling. And this is based on my belief that I must be loved by whom I love. This makes another belief that those who I love will behave as I wish at last. They produce emotion-backed thoughts while reacting to people’s behaviours and words and make me miserable. And I have found myself not being ‘here and now’. To say it specifically, I have been married for 11 years and have one daughter. And I have had a girl friend for 5 years. Open triangle relation. I have not been able to choose one of two for 5 years. And now my girl friend says that she will not see me anymore until I divorce. I like all of them. (I don’t want to use love in this time). When I imagine I divorce I feel too much miserable. When I imagine I live without a girl friend I feel too much miserable. I am totally at a loss. And now I am alone at the office typing on the keyboard and feel miserable. Why am I miserable? Because I am thinking about future. But this answer does not make me happy and harmless. I see my fear about the loss of all of them. This means my belief that I cannot live happily without them. Any comment? PETER: Well, it’s one of the best, concise descriptions of the problem of human ‘relationships’ I have read. These are the very problems that have driven monks into caves – and celibacy – in order to avoid facing them. Where I live, people pay a fortune to go on ‘retreats’, sometimes for weeks on end, as a relief from exactly these issues in daily life. Others save frantically in order to go to ashrams, attend groups or do courses in sheltered ‘nurturing’ environments in order to escape from having to feel these feelings and deal with these issues. When I met Richard I had almost given up on relationships and was on the ‘being alone, celibacy’ path. One of the major reasons I jumped on to the path to Actual Freedom was the chance to live with a woman in peace and harmony and to unravel the mysteries of sexual pleasure. I wanted to find the answers to these issues and the spiritual path offered none. The cute thing about the method Richard devised is that anyone can do it, anywhere in the world, doing an ordinary job, fulfilling one’s essential tasks like making money, being a father, etc. It requires no retreating, no avoiding, no withdrawing. ‘In the world as-it-is’, ‘with people as-they-are’ are phrases that describes a vibrant, fully-engaged actual freedom – not a second-rate living in denial or wrapped in spiritual ‘cottonwool’. A happiness and harmlessness that is not dependant on the ‘right’ circumstances, ‘good’ times or that old cliché – ‘being grateful’. One discovers the actual world – a peaceful, sensual world free of fear and aggression, a fairy-tale like paradise that is here under our very noses. In this discovering one is also able to live in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are with such an ease and comfort that would have been unimaginable 2 years ago. Both the ‘spiritual’ and ‘real’ worlds are seen for what they are – ‘psychic battlefields that are the direct result of 6 billion people fighting it out for survival. The most estimable feature of Virtual Freedom is that one lives free of fear for 99% of the time, for there is no fear in the Actual World. So, it sounds as if you may well be at one of life’s turning points that are often fascinating opportunities. I know, for me, the ending of relationships, deaths around me, changes in circumstances or places I lived, all gave me an opportunity to sit back and ‘take stock’ of my life. My wife leaving set me on the spiritual search, my son dying got me serious about it, another failed relationship got me single-pointed and then I met Richard who pointed out that I was looking in the wrong direction. To not only experience failure in both the ‘real’ world and ‘spiritual’ worlds but also to acknowledge my failures, proved to be essential prerequisites for an active and passionate pursuit of Actual Freedom. All proved to be serendipitous events ... serendipity –– The making of happy and unexpected discoveries by accident or when looking for something else; such a discovery. Oxford Dictionary Peter: The long life lived by most humans with multitudinous events and interactions with people and things provides for many opportunities for the making of serendipitous discoveries. Most people are so emotionally overloaded or trapped in repetitive behaviour patterns that serendipity goes unnoticed or, if seen, is so astounding as to be put down to some divine blessing or intervention or is being dismissed as luck. Serendipity is often claimed to be a prayer answered, good luck, God’s will, or ‘existence providing’, while blindly ignoring the other times when prayers go unanswered, ‘life’s a bitch’, it was bad luck or ‘someone else’s fault’, or it was ‘good’ to suffer as a ‘growth’ experience. On the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom serendipitous discoveries are a constant occurrence. With the ever-running of the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ one is continuously presented with opportunities to discover, investigate and understand what particular feeling, resulting from an event or interaction, is preventing you from being happy now. Yesterday’s happiness or some future – imaginary – happiness or harmlessness has absolutely no relevance right now, this only moment you can experience being alive. If you miss the opportunity this time around, this moment, you have another chance immediately, this moment, for one’s life is perpetually experienced in this moment only. And serendipity will always present you with the next issue, belief, instinctual pattern, mood or emotion, etc. – right on cue. But, as serendipitous as the incident or discovery or event may be, it is what you make of it that is of more significance. A serendipitous discovery, if dispassionately contemplated upon, can lead to a realization such that it becomes a life-changing event. The Actual Freedom Trust Library What a wonderful adventure life is ... Actualism Homepage
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