Andrew:
Richard: Although somewhat taken aback by the implications and ramifications of such obvious ignorement/ ignoration of my specific responses and explanations, online, it was a simple matter to point out how the moment-to-moment monitoring of the affections is, of course, an affective monitoring – along with reminding him how the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was a family man working 12-14 hours a day for 6-7 days a week in order to feed, clothe and house everyone (mortgage commitments, hire-purchase payments, and etcetera) – and to thereafter verbalise what is freely available for perusal and edification on The Actual Freedom Trust web site. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016)
Andrew: Well, maybe we can have a candid chat at the snack bar about this quote, and the general idea Richard has written down many times, and that is the direct reproach given in being “taken aback by the implication and ramifications of such obvious ignorement/ ignoration of my specific responses and explanations, online….”
It is not at all obvious “ignorement” unless one otherwise expects that other would at all times have remembered and considered everything one has said and written to them. I barely remember what I just said, let alone someone’s entire online repository of conversations.
It might not look like “ignorement” to you because you weren’t active on the Actual Freedom mailing list and are therefore ill-informed about the situation. What was obvious, indicated already in the portion you snipped –
Richard: Early on in my six-month visit to India in 2010 the person anonymised as Respondent № 04 on The Actual Freedom Trust list – whose first post is date-stamped 09 Jan 1999 on my portion of the web site – arranged to meet with me. Arriving after an early-hour inter-city train trip he spent around four or five hours with me and about an hour or so into the conversation he happened to mention, en passant, how he was not able to put the actualism method into practice at work as he could not be attentive to how he was experiencing this moment of being alive, each moment again, during his workaday hours as the job-description required that a large percentage of his time be spent at a computer station being attentive to the myriad manoeuvres on the computer screen virtually every moment of the day. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016)
– that this particular person was one of the first subscribers (No. 4) and was actively reading and commenting on the list until August 2005 where he admitted a lack of interest –
No. 4: ‘… I don’t have enough motivation to go beyond this [dropping the feeling so early, upon it beginning to arise, as if it never arose], because this itself is much better than most of my peers’. (Monday 1/08/2005 5:19 PM).
5 years later he subscribed to the Direct Route mailout for the sole purpose to arrange a meeting with Richard in India (link). One would at least surmise a certain interest in what Richard has had to say about actualism and how to put it into practice including the correspondences he himself had with Richard (20 all told and often long ones at that). For instance –
Richard to No. 4: The name of the game is to habituate an affective imitation of the actual each moment/ each place again – to consistently feel as happy and harmless (free of both malice and sorrow and, thus, their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – so as to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth to be apparent sooner rather than later … therefore whenever/ wherever there is the slightest diminution of that felicity/ innocuity it speaks for itself that some event, which has been constantly granted the power such as to customarily render that peace and harmony short-lived, has been permitted, via a lifetime of continuous/ routine ignoration, to wreak its havoc once again. [Emphasis added]. (31 Jul 2005)
Hence Richard’s expression of surprise at their not knowing about the affective aspect of monitoring of his feelings.
As for your taking umbrage at Richard’s term “taken aback”, here is what the dictionaries have to say what this phrase can mean –
Surprise, shock, stun, stagger, astound, astonish, startle, take by surprise, nonplus, bewilder.
Sample usage: The family seemed taken aback by the overwhelming generosity of their neighbours. (Merriam-Webster).
Of course there are other meanings such as dumbfound, daze, shake (up), jolt, throw, unnerve, disconcert, disturb, disquiet, unsettle, discompose, knock sideways, knock out.
As dictionaries are descriptive and not prescriptive it says more about the attitude of the reader’s choice to take the word as an insult or criticism rather than a simple description of astonishment.
All words are formed and used by feeling beings and therefore Richard was careful to find and use words, sometimes rare ones, which have the least emotional connotation, and he also he gave extensive dictionary definitions (often in footnotes/ tooltips) to explain which meaning is indicated. But nevertheless, despite the clear overall description of an actual freedom being devoid of ‘self’ and therefore sans any instinctual passions/ the affective faculty, some people still insist that Richard expresses malice and contempt, condemnation and “intentionally insulting”. It is part of the unbelievable/ unimaginable, incomprehensible/ inconceivable nature of the pristine purity of this actual world.
There were others who considered “golly”, equally an expression of surprise, as a malicious utterance. Viz.:
Respondent: … [is that] peace on earth is no where to be found in your correspondence.
Richard: Golly … all I did was ask my co-respondent whether they have ever got angry and, as they replied in the affirmative, I further enquired as to whether they, therefore, know from first-hand experience that it is a fact they got angry. Viz.:
• [Richard to Co-Respondent]: ‘I asked you whether you have ever got angry and you replied in the affirmative: therefore you know from first-hand experience, do you not, that it is a fact you got angry?
How on earth you can interpret that as being steamrolling/ verbally attacking (let alone devoid of peace on earth) has got me beat … and the same applies to my next enquiry:
• [Richard to Co-Respondent]: ‘You asked that friend of yours if he was angry and he replied in the affirmative: therefore he knows from first-hand experience, does he not, that it is a fact he got angry?
And my next after that:
• [Richard to Co-Respondent]: ‘And the same applies to each and every one of those people getting angry: provided they too report being angry they too know, do they not, from first-hand experience it is a fact they are angry?
And what I wrote after that:
• [Richard to Co-Respondent]: ‘Perhaps if I were to put it this way (in case that still appears tricky to you): by the very fact of having got angry on various occasions you report first-hand experiences (you are not expounding theory or hypotheses); by the very fact of having got angry that friend of yours also reports a first-hand experience (he too is not expounding theory or hypotheses); by the very fact of getting angry each and every one of those people getting angry can report first-hand experiences as well (they too would not be expounding theory or hypotheses)? (Richard, AF List, No. 89e, 26 Jan 2006).
If I might suggest? Instead of interpreting my words try taking them at face value … as I say what I mean, and mean what I say, it will make comprehension a whole lot easier. (Richard, AF List, No. 87a, 26 Jan 2006).
Andrew: As for my statement about “orthodox” actualism;
It is not at all “risible” unless you otherwise expect that I am ignoring the orthodox way that Actualism is presented in. Perhaps you thought “orthodox” means something other than it’s literal meaning, but in both Richard’s response and your own, what explanation is there for this “taken aback, and risible” framing of his and your thoughts?
Here is what orthodox means according to the Oxford dictionary – “following or conforming to the traditional or generally accepted rules or beliefs of a religion, philosophy, or practice. Synonyms: conservative, traditional, observant, conformist”.
How does that square with actualism or an actual freedom –
Richard: To be seeking spiritual freedom is to be going 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
From the Homepage: Actual freedom - new, non-spiritual, down-to-earth and actual.
And this from the Respondent Richard visited in India –
Respondent: After I wrote my comments on the earlier 3 parts of the e-mail yesterday and saved as draft, I was thinking about the newness issue of the actual world. Then this morning suddenly I got an insight (or is it an insight ?). I saw myself made of beliefs, feelings, emotions etc. So anything which is not this ‘I’ has to be new for if it is not new it would still be part of ‘me’.
Richard: Excellent … nothing of ‘you’ will remain. Nothing.
Respondent: Whether I will get into actual world or not by your method, but whenever ‘I’ cease to exist, whatever unfolds, has to be completely new, completely fresh with no shadow of the old.
Richard: Yes, this moment is never-to-be-repeated … thus it is ever-fresh and has to be visited again and again (unless one lives here all the time). One cannot re-visit it in memory … as one can in the affective world’s reverie and nostalgia. Thus it is ever-perfect and impeccable in its purity. Nothing dirty can get in … hence it needs no guarding. (Richard, AF List, No. 4, 26 Jan 1999).
Naturally, for someone who would want to make actuality fit their own paradigm, it may appear offensive, dogmatic or orthodox. Devika, when she changed into Irene, pleaded with Richard to allow love being part of actuality. The identity will use any trick in the book to remain in existence. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found this out on many occasions. But the purity of the actual world was irresistibly attractive and ‘she’ the instinctual/ emotional identity, had to finally lay down ‘her’ arms and consequently gladly agreed to ‘her’ demise.
Andrew: Is it truly such that you forget how ‘normal’ works and have to keep commenting on it? I am trying to understand this particular quirk.
I have been for the entire time “taken aback” and found it “risible” that anyone free would be surprised at anything at all in the human condition, and it’s always seemed that Richard especially was taking “jabs” at people when saying these types of statements.
Perhaps, just perhaps you confuse an actual freedom with what equanimity means to Buddhists?
Andrew: Honestly, it comes across as if Richard was “dropped in from the sky” and had no handle on what the others were experiencing. As if he had never experienced it.
In plain terms, it has always come across as both an uneasy indication that Richard wasn’t able to relate, even if only from memory, or was intentionally insulting people.
The “taken aback” could do with some explanation. (link)
If you read more of the correspondences on the Actual Freedom website you may discover the sheer volume of explanations and descriptions and personal reports Richard presents in order to meet people’s objections, explain their puzzling misunderstandings and have them comprehend the startling out-of-this-world-ness of the purity of actuality. I have never met anyone who was as much actually caring about his fellow human beings as Richard – actually caring meaning assisting them to bring their suffering to an end sooner rather than later.
It speaks for the warrior being still very much alive and active, looking for threats and insults from everywhere, including the only place, the actual freedom website and the present discussion forum, which could assist you in getting out of this war-zone.
I remember an early message of yours (somewhere in 2009) saying that “I get up each morning girding myself for battle”. This message had a deep visceral impact on ‘Vineeto’, so much so that I still remember ‘her’ being “taken aback” (as in shocked) about how not only you but presumably many other people lived their lives as a constant instinctually-driven battle, looking out and defending against enemies, and ‘Vineeto’ was determined to do something about this situation, in herself, to demonstrate that such forever adversarial attitude need not go on forever.
Here is the actualism method again – in case your previous reading was stopped by the “taken aback” phrase, this time explained by two correspondents –
Richard: Aye, it is so very simple that some find its radicality hard to understand … for instance:
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘(…) After all, that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? Not just to unravel the accrued identity, but to be happy and harmless. The method is incredibly simple: I am not happy now; I was happy a minute/ hour/ year ago; Ascertain what caused me to stop being happy; Get back to being happy as quickly as possible. No wonder this is so radical – it has none of the trappings and dogma that humans seem to need to create around such an elemental concept. Of course, sometimes simple things are the hardest to understand’. (Tuesday 6/05/2003 11:22 PM AEST).
Or that its utter simplicity escapes them:
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I have spent a lot of the last 18 months thinking about actualism, but the utter simplicity of it has escaped me. Let me take a snapshot before it flies away again. The idea is to spend as much time as possible feeling good, great, excellent or perfect. The universe itself needs no work, it is already fine. The peak experience shows that when we are okay the universe is perfect beyond compare. Human life can be fantastic. The universe doesn’t need to be improved before people can be happy. All we have to do is eliminate our own misery and malice, which resides right here in the breast (or brain stem)’. (Sunday 1/05/2005 11:44 AM AEST).
(Richard, AF List, No. 60g, 30 Oct 2005).
The only person you can change, and need to change, is yourself.
Cheers Vineeto