Thanks for this quote. It rings a bell with me because freedom is not an obsession with me and never has been. I don’t know why. I do understand what Richard is saying here but still I don’t/can’t rev up the desire for it as he says.
It may be my fundamental programming in that it is the way I have always been with everything I do. I have always taken it easy with everything I do and not given it my all.
It could be that I have the ability and can go half way w/o much effort and that is good enuf.
I need to see that half way is not good enough.
This applies to af and also to my mental and physical recovery from my heart attack last year.
What do I need to do to proceed?
Keep going and don’t stop comes to mind.
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Hi James,
The older I get the more I see the gift of age. It’s a gift in that we no longer have any significant reproductive value, and we can easily see that survival is not really an option.
I credit this years strange type of success to age, preserving, and the kindness of strangers here. Mostly likely not in that order, and most likely not even accurate! Haha
You have had a really rough ride with health. That wasn’t something I was aware of at the time as I wasn’t paying attention. But, now I know about it, you can “lean into” it.
How ‘you” are not going to survive, but far more importantly the gift this gives you.
Richard talked about “death” being a constant companion. (Not sure if those are his words, or my paraphrase).
You can relate now, without any doubt, the terror he felt on that river in Vietnam. The immediacy of impending and unpredictable doom.
You have felt it.
So, now you know that the terror is really just a fact; you can die at any moment; then it’s really now whether we can embrace this moment as truly the only moment we are ALIVE.
(This is me convincing myself as well, it’s been a constant theme with me, how to emotionally accept my own fear, and just be that fear, and thus, chose to enjoy and appreciate instead!)
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Thanks Andrew, you have made a good point. For example, aging has helped me to enjoy and appreciate the little things. I am glad to be alive and happy to be able to go and have lunch today. It may well be my big event for today and I am looking forward to enjoying and appreciating it.
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So, (I love to start with “so”!) I am planning a major life change. Details to be provide in due course, however it’s being experienced as a fearful thing.
Sometime in the last few months I read or saw someone saying how “such and such was harder than parting a 50 year old man from his money “ and it really stuck with me.
How I turned a corner over the last few years where age wasn’t a concept but ever increasing actual thing. How this affects me in particular is the ever present fear.
Which is strange, as it’s nothing new to me. This was always there, but I repressed it and just dove into whatever I thought was going to “deliver the goods “. Whether that was Taiwan, Sweden, or Russia, or something, somewhere, or someone else, I had a bravado which was foolhardy at a minimum.
Now, something as basic as moving state and getting a new job is scary.
The difference? I am not in love. I don’t have blinkers over my eyes, or a ring through my snout, leading me blindly into the usual dreams.
I will be alone in whatever I choose to do. I am choosing it, and it will happen, but due to the ever more obvious fact of being on the tail end of “decades I can waste “ it’s scary.
Something must change though, I for whatever reason, I know it is going to require a significant change in scenery.
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And I “forgive “ and accept myself for being such a failure in terms of Actualism; it’s not a small thing to take on the received wisdom of millennia, or the basic fear of being a ‘self’.
I am objectively doing somewhat poorly, but subjectively I am an absolute champion. Doing the very best I can, and I appreciate that.
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Hey Andrew – why is it scary?
I mean, I have been such a failure too … for the last two decades. 
While there’s no guarantee, I’d like to become free sooner than later. Regardless of the past, there’s still the opportunity to make actualism no. 1 priority in one’s life, putting everything else on a preference basis. Old age could be a great instigator of reappraisal of our priorities (I myself have started developing gray hairs) …
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I felt hesitant posting this, because it seems I should have done “better” , then I saw this thought was just another way of putting myself down!
Lately, in the vein of radical change being necessary and possible, I have been finding that the primary change was kindness and emotional acceptance of myself, as a feeling being. Indeed, a dirty rotten cunning thing, but with the now habitual emotional acceptance of that! As in, less and less resistance to being the feeling, despite that feeling often being far from what would have previously denied that I was.
The surprise has been how simple it is to trace how I am feeling back to some basic fear, rooted in survival and reproduction. How each story I have told myself, unquestioned, was only a very thin veneer of an obvious survival/reproductive imperative .
This is of course, so fundamental to the premise and understanding of actual freedom, and something that was easily “rattled off” by me in any number of conversations (both internal and with others), but with no clear experience of the connection between who I normally feel myself to be, and think, and the “instinctual passions “.
Mentally, there is no judgement in the investigation. Which has been the biggest surprise how that doesn’t arise. The intent that radical change is necessary, seems to have dispelled that habit through the clarity that I am indeed the one choosing it all.
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For example, asking now, how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?
Slightly embarrassed. Which is a fear. A fear of what? Judgement of the reader. How is that fundamentally scary? I am afraid of people in general. Why? They are capable of harming me, and often have. Is there actual danger right now? No. Is there still fear? Yes.
I am feeling the fundamental fear that makes up me. I feel a thrill in how simple it is to feel myself be afraid. How detached in this moment it is from any factual danger. How that is perfectly normal ‘self’ thing to be feeling, how it fuels any number of stories.
How I can, internally, but easily in writing, “wax lyrical “ about this fear, and feel it morph into a thrill, and without any particular effort (beyond the years of effort to get here, haha) I am feeling better about this post, and no longer afraid. Well, a tiny bit is there, but more so that I always thought a fundamental fear would always be cathartic and dramatic.
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Back to the point about circling back to a simple understanding based on the premise that I am fundamentally a survival and reproduction ‘system ‘, a ‘self’ arranged around this dual goal made up of the “passions” of fear, desire, aggression, and nurture. Primarily, there is fear. I don’t know if others agree, and I would certainly listen, but fear seems to be primary. Fear that I will not exist, hence surviving and reproducing.
Is it fundamental? Fear? It seems that without any effort, or mental gymnastics, everyday I can circle back whatever anger, or affection, or desire, or even caring impulse back to how it assuages or expresses my fear of not existing. Of dying.
So, all body image issues, easily trace back. Just about everything so far is fear. The feeling of being this, then so simply letting the thoughts express the pathway to the simple impulse of somehow assuaging fear, it feels good! It feels freeing and very pleasant.
No gymnastics, or intellectual debate. It’s just obvious that without an internal denial of this fundamental weakness (that I am fear), I am as the 3 year old daughter of a client said once “you are a scaredy cat!”. Yep!, haha. Fundamental scaredy cat confirmed!
The obvious irony being that it’s taken quite a bit of drama to feel that without fighting it or conversely believing that a huge catharsis and demonstrative drama was the order of the day!
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It doesn’t matter though really, whether this is accurate. As Kuba said yesterday, “walking the walk” is where it’s at! If I am feeling good, then it works, if not then there is something further to look at.
Also, regarding Richard saying “it takes some doing to start with”, my understanding is that it is “out from control, different way of being” period of time he was referring to in his experience of that initial effort in 1981(?). That for him the method was about bringing on this fundamental change, rather than an ongoing “in control” change.
The implication being that if an “out from control different way of being “ doesn’t eventuate, then it will always “take some doing “, not just at the beginning.
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I am writing this deliberately because I didn’t want to write it!
I almost had something pce like happen today while in the middle of a long and elaborate discussion about Actualism with my son at work!
My son and I work alone in the same room, seperate from the rest of the minimalist staff the company has. We often have long and detailed discussions.
Today, we had the most fruitful ever.
He had said something like “we have feelings, some of them we don’t like, but this is what life is like”. I said “exactly! This is the entirety of Actualism! We see that a lot of what we feel isn’t enjoyable, and we otherwise believe that is how life is! However, the discovery Richard made is that we can choose to change that!”
It was more elegant than that, I think. But while elaborating this statement of his, where I could see the entire Actualism premise and the germination of the solution in the statement “this is how life is” and that it doesn’t have to be that way!
I was speaking for a while, with various topics of how we choose, even long before we could ever call it a choice, and there was a bird singing in the background through an open door as I talked about being actually free, about being free of the self, the feelings, the entire experience of our inherent condition, and the room was directly there. I was understanding what I was saying, I was appreciating his (lifelong) intelligence and how we could “sum up” the premise so well, from first principles….
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The thought of meeting at the yet to be confirmed actualist meeting in Portugal, is fantastic background pressure.
Again, I don’t want to post this, but for that very reason , I will!
Reading and considering Leila’s posts, and her situation and the situation Iran is currently in, which I have deliberately not educated myself on because I know how angry I will be, it brings up my oldest and most persistent thought.
I do not want it to be an objection, as it is clear to me how sensible actual freedom is, in all but one thing, it would seem. Which is why I don’t want to write this, but I know that not writing it is silly.
I can’t get past injustice. Of all the infinite number of conscious beings born, having only a small fraction become free, and experience the perfection of life directly, is not only a feeling of injustice, but as unemotionally as I can muster, as to be as clear minded an let intelligent thought operate; a nonsensical thought. Everything must have a resolution. All actions have reactions. All questions have answers.
To think that untold gazillions (infinite numbers) of conscious beings simply suffer then cease to exist, is beyond my ability to “put aside “. Or better said, I don’t understand why others can put aside something so obvious.
This is written because I value my journey, and can’t (and have never) been able to move mentally or emotionally beyond this.
It seems obvious to me that all conscious beings must, in a perfect universe, have resolution of their existence.
Instead of just “throwing that out there” I will go through some of my considerations.
Possibility 1> In the instant of death, a “resolution “ happens. Many have reported amazing experiences, known as NDEs , where the person is technically dead, but is revived. Some level of resolution could be possible, but only if there is continuous brain activity. A bullet through the head, from most angles would preclude that moment. Indeed, a spear, arrow, or sabre tooth tigers jaws through the head would also preclude any time for an NDE.
Possibility 2> Then, of course, we have what is called the “spiritual “ resolution. In this resolution, conscious is not completely dependent on the brain, and continues in an “out of body” state. There doesn’t seem to be any known way that consciousness could exist without a brain, however, the question remains unanswered; how can a conscious being resolve in a way that makes sense?
Mathematically, it is acceptable to set a “brick wall” resolution. One can perfectly extinguish an equation, instantly. Indeed, all mathematics are instantly resolved. There is no need for a complex equation to resolve over time.
However, lives do not seem to me to be equations, or if we want to reduce it to physics, lives are not “energy “.
It was this question that allowed me to explore beyond Christianity.
What I am obviously asking, is how is this resolved?
Explicitly, so we are not resolving different questions;
How do the lives of untold gazillions of beings, who having suffered the ‘condition’ we humans call the “human condition “, how do these lives resolve?
How do lives resolve?
It irresponsible to just leave this here! Haha.
My thinking is about how I can resolve this objection. Although my understanding is that is does contradict Richard’s writings, that death is the end, I am not sure that conclusion is accurate.
What I am wondering is whether it is necessary that death is the end for actual freedom to be a thing?
I have no scientific evidence obviously, or even any experiential subjective evidence (an NDE), however, I seem to be compelled, if I am to be a “proper actualist” to somehow “get beyond” this thought.
I can’t. There has to be a resolution for every conscious entity.
Indeed, I suppress this thought, and today reading Leila’s journal, knowing that I have deliberately not educated myself on the brutality currently happening in Iran, it comes rushing out!
I do not want this thought to be a thing, but it is. I cannot deny or move past it. It was the thought that allowed me to challenge and leave Christianity. The thought that we are all “one” consciousness; we are all god. We are somehow going through life in some bizarre exercise of self discovery and experience.
I want to answer this objection with something like “yes, all conscious beings experience resolution, but there is no way a human intelligence can understand how” and leave it at that.
What I am looking for is some acknowledgment that I am not crazy here.
I mean, the obverse is also ok, that is, yes you are crazy and the answer is “xyz”.
Also acceptable. 
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So, this idea, that all conscious beings must experience resolution, gets me “off the hook “.
Initially, this wasn’t the idea, but obviously I am not excluded from all those gazillion beings needing resolution.
Hmm, I can see how this serves my purpose of just staying myself and not changing, that the universe will resolve everything “fairly “ and with impunity at some indeterminate point.
Ok, I see how this is demotivating “for me”. That may be the best I can do with this question; put it aside and make efforts regardless. I doubt the reader is going to have some ultimate answer for me.
I have to, in short, remove this idea, no matter how sensible it seems, from my reasons for not going “harder” at the goal of eliminating objections to feeling good.
Hi Andrew,
I’ll have a go at at least beginning to chip away at this one. You write that in a perfect universe all conscious beings should have a resolution. And since this doesn’t appear to be the case you experience a sense of injustice at this state of affairs - I think this summarises the objection.
I’ll just list a few errors with this line of reasoning to begin the chipping away :
- Actual perfection is not a moral perfection
- Moral perfection cannot exist as an actuality, hence it needs an imagined afterlife/god to encompass it
- To rile against the universe for “being unjust” (or any permutation of this) is to pre-suppose that there is some kind of god behind it all, dishing out here and taking away there.
- Justice/injustice are human concepts, they cannot be applied to the universe.
- Your phrase of “conscious beings” does not distinguish between actual flesh and blood bodies or the ‘I’/‘me’ as ‘self’. Who exactly is being saved here?
Writing the above out one thing becomes clear, is that your objection and your line of reasoning is completely seeped in morality. It is looking at this question from the viewpoint of ‘humanity’. Various philosophers have already attempted to answer these questions by looking through that lens and no satisfactory answer can be found. Only various flights of fancy which your later posts devolved into.
But I agree that it’s not good enough to say “I’ll just wait until actually free to get an answer”, because that sense of injustice is getting in the way for you now. Personally I have found that this question can be resolved satisfactorily (as far as it goes) whilst remaining ‘me’, but it cannot be resolved fully until one is outside of the human condition.
Perhaps the place to start for now, is by addressing all these moral and anthropocentric pre-suppositions that your question is seeped in, and then it might begin to make a bit more sense, without requiring a supernatural resolution of one kind or another.
Hope this helps to at least make a dent in it! 
And something for a laugh - last time I spoke to my mum I mentioned that actual perfection does exist, one just has to look at the world about. She replied with → if the universe is perfect then why does the Sun cause us cancer… Anthropocentrism reigns supreme haha.
Perhaps another question too → Do you feel/believe that the universe exists for our sake. This is the very core of that anthropocentric mindset. And of course if that is the foundation then anything/everything will apparently ‘be wrong’, even the ants that bite me when I get close etc.
This last bit I find particularly fascinating myself. The universe is it’s own perpetuus mobilis and as such life (even humans) is not the be all and end all of what the universe is. As a flesh and blood body only one is the universe experiencing itself, that is the meaning of life, not the foundation of the universe itself. That is rather wondrous, and very grand!
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Hi Kuba,
Thanks for the response and many ways I can look at this, that I hadn’t considered.
Starting with your mums objection, that was so close to my own emotional state while walking and contemplating, though I wasn’t particularly focused on it. (It was a very hot day with a scorching sun in Perth today, even when to sun was setting.) This is an excellent thing for me to consider; anthropcentricism.
I had not considered that angle.
You mentioned having resolved it as a ‘self’. I do understand that some “putting aside” is needed on my part. I don’t see this an an objection to the core of actual freedom, that the entire ‘self’ willingly and happily disappears in a once in a lifetime act of altruistic sacrifice. That doesn’t conflict in my mind.
The solution is emotionally logical. Indeed, our religions have been explicitly dealing with sacrifice the entire time. We knew all along that something has to die.
I say, emotionally logical, as I never had any objection about dying in this sense. It’s the core of Christianity. The objection is related to the same objection that many atheists will have about being “saved”. What happened to all those humans who lived before Jesus was born? How can they believe in someone who doesn’t exist yet?
It’s good to simply put this on the screen. As I don’t have an objection about feeling good, feeling happy and harmless, and ultimately being actually free. There is no conflict between my life finding that resolution and this moment.
It’s something about how focusing on myself, to that degree that I can set aside the compassion, sympathy and empathy for all those billions of souls…
Perhaps that’s real the key, I have to abandon that ship! That particular question is beyond anything ‘I ‘ can understand. There may be an intelligent and comprehensible answer, but not one that a feeling being can comprehend.
Yeah this is an interesting one, because the answer can be experienced in a PCE, and then the flavour of that answer can be experienced when naive. And yet when trying to “import it” back into the real world there is a translation issue 
. This is what I mean that I have resolved the question satisfactorily but not totally. It’s knowing for sure that there is an answer but also understanding that ‘I’ have to disappear for the answer to be lived.
The contemplative game which ‘I’ can play is to use the question as a springboard into wonder, marvel and amazement, and then the experiential answer can be glimpsed.
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