JesusCarlos: It’s Friday afternoon, and my partner is encouraged to give me feedback on my way of being and acting over the past week. Above all, she emphasizes that I’m like “absent.” Absorbed in my worries, too busy with my phone, not here and now. She rightly resents this. I receive it with discomfort but at the same time with openness, sticking to the facts: she’s right.
It’s Saturday, and since the day before, I’ve tried to abandon my worries and be here, with attentiveness. We hike through the forest until we reach a waterfall at the far end. We’re alone. After a period of relaxation, a moment of pure awareness occurs. I marvel at the stillness of the rock while the majestic curtain of water falls steadily. I mention this to her, and she makes a humorous comment that makes us laugh for a while. "Yes, it’s very still, but the water is also damaging it slowly.” We called her thought the “anti-zen” thought of doom. All this reminds me that perfection comes with a high dose of humor.
It’s Sunday and we’re at the cinema. We went to see the new “Dracula.” Two-thirds of the way through the film, I realize I’m feeling fear. But it has nothing to do with the film. Upon closer inspection, I realize it’s almost a panic attack. I think that if this feeling increases, I’ll either vomit, or run, or throw myself on the floor. But as best I can, I keep my hands in my pockets. I observe. Thoughts come and go, all of them doubts, fears, regarding actual freedom. What if this is just another manipulation? What if it’s an algorithm to program humans to no longer question anything and conform to the current regime? What if I become an inert robot by taking that step? What if Vineeto is actually an agent of the Matrix? (that film had a deep impact on me in my youth), etc.
Hi Jesus Carlos,
I understand your fear but you are misled by your feelings. About three years before becoming free ‘Vineeto’ expressed a similar sentiment when ‘she’ said to Richard, “to me you represent death”. Richard laughed and then said “I’m just a bloke”. Today I can say the same thing to you – I am just an old woman. As you said above – “perfection comes with a high dose of humour”.
JesusCarlos: I clearly realize that these thoughts arise from an emotional reaction to the realization that my defence mechanisms cause suffering and aren’t truly necessary (Saturday’s EE/PCE realization). And I can clearly see that they are a core part of my identity, but that eliminating them means eliminating all of me; just one part can’t go.
This insight increases my fear, almost to the point of terror. “My feelings are me, and I am my feelings”; “becoming my own best friend in this, isn’t something imposed on me, it’s something I choose for myself”; “This is for the good of humanity, it’s for its good, and for all the others I affect with my interactions, my absences”; “what is known is uncertain, uncertainty is the necessary step toward finding a solution”; “stick to the facts. What do the facts say? Don’t my interactions, my decisions, my will to fully be here improve when I really enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive?” This last thought is the one that has the greatest impact on overcoming fear (because is not only a thought, is a connection with pure intent). I begin to experience a reduction of fear, recognizing that through facts, and not through my beliefs or daydreams, there is a clear and evident truth (paraphrasing René Descartes). The concrete experience of what is truly beneficial is the guide on this wide and wonderful path. Little by little, terror is replaced by the sweetness of this realization, which also awakens memories of my life in which I have always been searching for the final solution to my suffering.
Have you ever thought that it might be the other way round, that your fear is created by ‘me’ wanting to force ‘me’ to do something ‘I’ am not ready to voluntarily do? In this case this is not pure intent informing you but passions pitched against each other in order to keep ‘me’ in existence.
JesusCarlos: At this point, the film’s plot (spoiler alert) connects with the emotional thread of my feelings and thoughts, and the acceptance of the main character’s death as an altruistic decision that frees others from his own burden makes even more sense. I’m amazed by this synchronicity.
I don’t know the film but this is not synchronicity but real-world sentimental fantasy for bitter-sweet feel-good effect.
JesusCarlos: The film ends. I’m not in a PCE, but in a kind of IE/EE, experiencing a lot of sweetness and intimacy. And I tell my partner what happened. Tears run. And I’m incredibly grateful with her for having the courage to tell me what she’d been noticing these past few days about my way of withdrawing from being here, as a defence mechanism. And that reminded me that what is the most important for me is to truly give all of myself to her, and to the rest of living human bodies.
As you describe well, the effect of this fantasy is that you feel grateful, not appreciative, towards your partner – which is a ‘good’ feeling not a felicitous/ innocuous feeling. You would be misleading yourself to compare that to pure intent and your aim to altruistically ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body (which does not die when ‘I’ become extinct), that body and every body.
JesusCarlos: I see what happened as a positive sign of progress, a kind of preparation for facing/ understanding that wall of fear behind which freedom could lie. At least a virtual one. (link)
Now to the main reason I am replying to your post – “understanding that wall of fear”. While one does experience fear in the process of becoming free, for instance, when there is resistance to admit to this or that aspect of the identity, and one certainly needs daring to persist, it is nevertheless important to understand that it is always a self-induced suffering. ‘I’ am feeding the fear, either by fighting against it or by wanting to have something immediately which needs a gentler more friendly approach, especially when it comes to ‘my’ extinction. Stand back and have a chuckle about the antics ‘I’ get up to and get back to feeling good.
Perhaps the following quote will make things clearer regarding “that wall of fear” –
RESPONDENT: I find it particularly interesting that with more recent experiences of becoming free, for example Peter, Vineeto, and others you’ve related – there was no wall of fear or dread. The process was ‘matter of fact,’ ‘simple,’ ‘easy.’
RICHARD: That is because they all became (newly) free via the well-publicised epoch-changing opening in human consciousness designated as the ‘direct route’ on the ‘A Long-Awaited Public Announcement’ web page on The Actual Freedom Trust website.
Here are the very first words on that web page:
• ‘The directors of The Actual Freedom Trust take great pleasure in making public knowledge of a direct route at the end of the wide and wondrous path (now both gentrified and rendered secure) to an actual freedom from the human condition – a down-to-earth manumission [from Latin manumittere, lit. ‘send out from one’s hand’, and meaning release from slavery; release from bondage or servitude; set free] hitherto only available dangerously via spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment …’. (Long Awaited Announcement).
RESPONDENT: How can current actualists bypass such acute experiences of dread on the ‘path’ to freedom?
RICHARD: By tapping into pure intent – nowadays also personified in its feminine aspect (its masculine aspect became personified 30+ months after 1992) – hitherto only accessible via a PCE.
RESPONDENT: Are they [such acute experiences] merely an idiosyncrasy of different personalities, or are they tied to an approach or attitude?
RICHARD: Neither … they came about because (a) nobody had gone beyond spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment before … and (b) the direct route (opened by Peter and Richard on the 29th of December, 2009) was yet to be forged back then.
RESPONDENT: Is there a strategy that can be utilized to bypass or minimize such experiences?
RICHARD: Yep … tapping into pure intent should do the trick nicely.
For instance:
#10876
From: richard.actualfreedom
Date: Sat Feb 4, 2012 12:16 am
Subject: Re: […] about two types of Actual Freedom
• [James] […] Is the pce necessary? ps: Is the pce necessary for pure intent to come out of this vast stillness?
• [Richard]: G’day James, Prior to 11.25 AM (AEDST) on Saturday, the 14th of November, 2009, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) was indeed necessary for pure intent – that benevolence and benignity of the vast and utter stillness of the universe itself – and the reason why a PCE was essential is reported/ described/ explained both on The Actual Freedom Trust website and in ‘Richard’s Journal’.
[…] what the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago experienced as an ‘over-arching benevolence and benignity’ was experienced by the feeling-being ‘Peter’, on the 29th of December 2009, as [quote] ‘a sweetness that was palpable’ [endquote] and that ‘he’ was [quote] ‘literally being bathed in this sweetness’ [endquote]. […].
Other people have reported experiencing that over-arching benevolence and benignity as a palpable sweetness as well.
Pamela, for instance, spoke of it in those terms during the ten minutes or so immediately prior to the pivotal event/ the definitive moment when she became actually free of the instinctual passions/ the feeling-being formed thereof on the 27th of January 2010.
(On another occasion, about three weeks later, she reported experiencing it as being an ‘infinite tenderness’ of such a magnitude as to render her incoherent upon endeavouring to describe it to Vineeto).
Vineeto […snip…] has written of it, in a private email, as being ‘an overwhelming sweetness, so overwhelmingly sweet that tears were running down my face. At another time I experienced a tenderness so vast that I was speechless for a good time afterwards’.
I mention these reports so as to demonstrate that what the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago experienced as an ‘over-arching benevolence and benignity’ may not necessarily be exactly the way others experience it. […]. (Message 10876, Richard, List D, James, 4 Feb 2012).
The whole correspondence from 25 May 2015 is well-worth reading from the beginning because it drives the point home even more.
As you might have gathered by now, when you are a friend to yourself and look at/ sort out the various obstacles to being happy and harmless, enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive, when you become more and more naïve, like yourself and others, then you can follow the wide and wondrous path of felicitous discoveries and appreciative amazement, then there is no need to get lost in the scary thicket of self-created fear, sorrow and bitter-sweet fantasy.
Then, following pure intent, one day the choice is so crystal-clear and irresistibly attractive, then the facts speak for themselves and inevitably trigger ‘my’ permission to the only obvious action which is not of ‘my’ doing.
Cheers Vineeto