Vineeto: Richard always maintained that the flow-on effect of what we are seeing today as our standard morals, ethics and principles how to live life comes from the dead enlightened masters and saints of a 3000-5000-year history of humanity.
Kuba: Ah this is so much fun, yes I have often contemplated the very same thing. Indeed the ‘mould’ that they set in place back then is as if the very outline of reality, the rules of the game.
Hi Kuba,
Yes, it is fun to discover and recognize the pattern and how much everyone’s lifestyle, values, principles and values matches it exactly. That is the only way not to be a slave to it any longer.
Peter: Nobody believes that it is possible to be completely and irrevocably happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, on earth, here, now, as a flesh and blood body. This belief is, after all, the core of Ancient Wisdom – the sacred and inviolate centre-piece of the Human Condition – that life is a ‘growth’ experience based on suffering.
Kuba: And this one also! I have often wondered about something that is called these days a “growth mindset”, it’s a very popular ideology these days. I see it in a lot of high achievers, and for sure it was something that I was subject to for a long time. It could be summarised by this idiom in martial arts that a fighter trains for a competition and a martial artist trains for a lifetime, they are on an “endless path of self improvement”, never perfect but always striving to be better. It’s funny that the proponents of this creed see themselves as modern day samurais which of course gives a clue as to where this wisdom came from. […]
This “growth mindset” as you describe it, is nothing new, it is very very old, it only has a new shiny wrapper. The aim is to always improve but never arrive. It made sense in the early days of humanity when people had to work hard to make a living and feed their children – now in an affluent society the goals and values stay the same but make no sense whatsoever.
In its own way, the sacred value of love is one of best examples of this “never perfect but always striving” set-up. Because it is the identity’s substitute for the actual benevolence, for actual caring and actual intimacy of actual freedom, and as such as fake as the identity itself, love can only promise but never deliver and never satisfy.
Kuba: It is fascinating that these values simply flow from those spiritual values set up “back then”. It’s also fascinating that Richard was able to locate these new and genuine values which originate from the perfection and purity of the actual world.
I find it cute that you say “Richard was able to locate these new and genuine values” – ha, he did “locate” them in his PCEs, which many if not everyone experiences, but he was the only one who considered it possible and expedient enough to find a way to permanently live in the perfection and purity of the actual world.
Kuba: What Peter wrote really hit’s bullseye with regards to the outlines of my identity – “that life is a ‘growth’ experience based on suffering”. This is ‘me’ as the high achiever, finding meaning in endless strenuous challenges. Unable to unreservedly place enjoyment and appreciation as the number 1 thing to be done. So it makes sense that I would make this ultimate achievement (actual freedom) into a sudorific challenge for ‘me’.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, you have done very well – to arrive at this point where you know for a fact that no improvement of ‘me’ will ever allow ‘me’ to enter the actual world. That is the very end of the “sudorific challenge”, a taboo outcome for a ‘high achiever’, lol.
Kuba: Accepting that it is easy and also that it will actually happen now (hence no more pursuit) is to put ‘myself’ out of business. Yet this is already happening and has been the past couple of days. I can no longer proceed in the difficult direction, I know it is a dead end. Now it is just the case of proceeding towards this new way of living known as actual freedom. (link)
Ha, this is great to hear. Now you are ‘forced’ to enjoy and appreciate that life was meant to be easy. It will be tough to get used to that, won’t it!
Cheers Vineeto