“One has ‘been’ in the past, one is ‘being’ in the present, and one will ‘be’ in the future. That ‘being’ is what one calls ‘I’ , taking it to be me; me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will be … this sense of continuity, an instinctual entity called ‘me’ existing over time, is not me as-I-am. I do not exist over time; I exist only as this moment exists, and now has no duration. Therefore I am never lonely, for there is no separation; there is only actual intimacy.”
-Richard
"‘Man’ and ‘woman’ are in two separate camps; it is as if they are two different races. So they start from separation … and love seems to promise to bring them together, to provide the intimacy they all long for. But my question is: why are humans separate to start off with? Is it an actual separation – apart from the physical differences – or have humans been trained into an artificial separation? Is one not conditioned to think – and feel – as a ‘man’ and as a ‘woman’? Has one not taken on a gender identity and think and feel it to be ‘me’? So is there not an artificial entity, an ‘I’, that one takes to be me as I actually am? One’s most intimate ‘being’ is a fiction anyway, so any gender identity overlaid is equally false. If ‘I’ am false, artificial, then any connection – a bridge – between two psychological entities can only be as artificial as the separation itself.
Love is this bridge. Love is artificial. Being artificial it needs constant stimulus to keep it ‘alive’. Therefore, the moment it starts to sag, the cycle automatically swings into action; frustration, niggles, fights, hurt, resentment, remorse, repentance, forgiveness, promises … then back to love and trust again. Although everybody promises each time, in contrition, to forgive and forget, they never do. The promise to forgive and forget is never carried out. The hurt, frustration and anger is unconsciously stored away, adding to the already existing resentment that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ feel toward each other for being separative in the first place. This entire process has no chance of producing anything other than an artificial intimacy."
-Richard (same source as above)
“I did everything I could to be as happy and harmless (as free of sorrow and malice) for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by first putting everything on a does-not-really-matter-in-the-long-run basis. That is, I would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but, if it did not turn out like that, it did not really matter for it was only a preference. I chose to no longer give other people—or the weather even—the power to have me annoyed, irritated, irked, or even peeved if this was possible.”
R: Are you saying that emotions are unhealthy for the body?
Q: Yes, it’s good to have as little of them as possible … rather none at all. This does not mean that therefore one should repress them. When an emotion is there, take it in hand … put it in the middle of the table, as it were, and walk around it, have a good look at it and feel every aspect of it. Become aware of it and ask: ‘What is so good about this emotion’?
R: Some people would say to let go of it …
Q: No, no, no. I don’t ‘let go of it’. By looking at it, it goes. This looking and feeling is looking and feeling with total awareness … all of me is aware of what this emotion is doing to me as this body. Where, in the body, do I feel it the most? Does it really feel good? Is it one hundred per cent good? No, it is not … there is always a ‘Yes, but …’ Even the good emotions can never live up to what they promise. By looking at them they disappear; you see how unnecessary they are. That is with hindsight of course, for you cannot see that they are unnecessary – that there is ‘life after emotions’ – when you are in the grip of the emotion.
The most primal instinctual passion is the desire to procreate – to impregnate or be impregnated, depending on one’s gender. Of all of my investigations into the human instincts this has proved to be one of the most rewarding as not only have I succeeded in disempowering the brutish and senseless sexual drive such that I am now free to enjoy the sensual pleasures of sex but I have also freed others from my sexual predatoriness. In hindsight, the investigation into instinctual sexual desire has been one of the most fruitful aspects of my investigations into the instinctual passions as it has not only opened the door to being able to live in peace and harmony with my partner but it also help attune my senses to the myriad of sensual delights of everyday living.
One desire, however, still remains active and persistent and that is the desire to become actually free of the human condition.
-Peter
Peter – SC Sincere Intent, Pure Intent (actualfreedom.com.au)
Such [spiritual] teachings are specifically designed to widen the already existing rift between the ‘me’ as a spirit-like entity and what I am – this flesh and blood body – thereby validating ‘my’ existence as being separate from the corporeal mortal body in which ‘I’ have temporarily taken up residence. Such teachings are meant to encourage the aggrandizing of ‘me’ and ‘my’ ‘self’-centred thoughts and feelings whilst simultaneously denigrating the wonders of the workings of actual flesh and blood bodies as well as the delights of sensate experiencing. Following such teachings is indeed effortless, not only because it is eminently fashionable to do so, but also because all ‘self’-centred activity is instinctual – being ‘self’-centred comes natural to all human beings.
Actualism, on the other hand, requires effort like you have never known effort before –
Becoming happy and harmless is an utterly down-to-earth pursuit and, as with all down-to-earth pursuits, no effort = no result. Or, to put it another way, dreaming is effortless but actual change requires actual effort.
-Peter (same source as above)
The question I would ask is what is your intent – your committed aim – when you ask yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’
Why are you asking the question? What is your motivation when you ask the question? Do you have a purpose when you ask the question? What are you looking for when you ask the question? What type of answer are you looking for? What do you do when you come up with an answer?
You might notice that all of these questions are to do with intent.
For an actualist the importance of intent is obvious – if you are practicing a method specifically designed to facilitate your becoming less harmful and more happy, and you have no intent to become less harmful and more happy, then any attempt to be attentive as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive will be an aimless practice, a meaningless practice, an ineffective practice and a fruitless practice, or to use your words – ‘just a mental thing’.
The question of intent, put plainly, is – ‘what is it that you want to do with the rest of your life?’
-Peter (same source as above) (emphasis mine)
I think this is a pretty big key to why many find themselves spinning in circles with the method… if 100% of the being isn’t on board, there will always be a covert redirection of energy, robbing the method of effectiveness.
Made myself a phone background 
I struggle with this a lot. Part of it has to do with the waxing and waning of intent. So sometimes I’m fully committed and other times I’m not. I really want to be, but I’m not. What does one do in such a situation?
We are motivated, highly motivated. The question is whether we know ourselves, whether we are kind and understand what we already want.
Using our super ego, our “should machine” is pointless.
What do you want to do now? Right now?
Ah the good old, ‘how do I want to want something which I do not currently want’, I struggle with this a lot too 
What I find works well is just pursue the thing you feel that you want. You will either end up with something good or see why it doesn’t work. Follow the legal protocols and moral codes tho 
But i intellectually know it doesn’t deliver the goods. I also may not be in a position to act how I feel. And what if I just end up wasting my life then
I guess the question is, if you know intellectually that other desires are not what you want then how do you know that it is actual freedom that you want instead? Is it also just intellectually? Because it seems like a good idea etc.
I think it’s being stuck in this kind of intellectual reasoning that ends up providing no intent, it’s basically doing A over B because ‘it seems like a good idea’.
I have been stuck in this place for a long time now, how to generate this enormous intent to self immolate, how to want to proceed lol. And all the while the petty desires are beckoning me to waste time with them haha.
I guess it depends. If it’s an all consuming desire like love, I don’t think there’s any avoiding it. But if love has you by the balls then I don’t think you’re contemplating this question anyway. If it’s petty desires, I don’t know if chasing them down is actually effective. One idea I’m thinking of now is to keep contrasting it with purity like Srinath once suggested. But @Kub933, I know you’ve had numerous PCEs, so are they not enough to entice you to give up the petty desires? Or is there something else at play?
Because it’s ‘me’/‘Me’ that will do the heavy lifting of the direction + effort of becoming free, I need all of ‘Myself’ on board.
I’ve experienced this and think it’s an inevitable starting place for a normal ‘being’
I’ve found it to be similar to Srinath’s “I decided I would gather everything together experientially …” Basically we all have some degree of motivation / intent toward freedom (pure intent) or we wouldn’t even be on this forum. But our intent is also scattered across many different conflicting goals. So for me it’s been about first sincerely seeking out / surveying all those different intents that ‘I’ consist of… this is key because that is where my energy is already organically going.
And then it’s about figuring out how, in a collaborative way, those goals can be accomplished… or more importantly the ‘goal behind the goal’ can be accomplished, while also harmonizing with the goal of becoming free. This can be a temporary allyship until that particular intent is no longer helpful, but I’ll only drop that ‘being’ when it’s really clear that it’s not helping to achieve those goals. Any attempt at forcing it will only drive ‘me’ underground, French resistance style.
It’s really important (as @Andrew has been finding lately) to be a friend to ourselves in all this again because any internal conflict has an enervating effect.
This year I’ve had no shortage of motivation because I can see how inching closer to purity is serving those other goals as well. And now things are getting really interesting as I’m starting to see how the normal ways I’ve approached those goals in the past were flawed, leaving me with no choice but to change… and toward purity is winning the argument of effectiveness. Richard said something to me in 2019 along the lines of that the self will listen to sense when it comes to accomplishing its goals. The self wants intimacy, security, it wants to be effective, but it is flawed. Presenting yourself with a better way to accomplish the goals you already have via becoming free is something the self will consider as evidence mounts.
It’s also something you don’t have to have all the answers to today. You only need enough of a thesis to get started, put the method into action, and then as experience comes in then there’s more reason to continue. You can’t skip ahead, you can’t ‘be’ someone else, which is why it’s important to sincerely survey your own motivations to know what buttons to push, and what things need to be investigated further.
I love this because it’s so simple, so obvious. “Is that allowed?” Well it doesn’t feel like it’s allowed but at the end of the day the only one really stopping us is ourselves…
With the back-pressure of death, it’s worth pursuing these things because it’s the only chance we get. And with pure intent in play, it starts to become clear that everything is going perfectly
The intellectuality is an attempt at controlling yourself, convincing yourself of something that you don’t actually have experience with. Go out into the arena, decide to be happy & harmless come-what-may, and observe the results. When you see how it goes, when you see how it serves your ultimate goals, it starts to have an impelling effect as in “I have no choice.”
It’s like being a fledgling diver trying to convince yourself to blindly hurl yourself off a cliff where you don’t know what the landing is, you don’t know how high you’re jumping from, you don’t know if there are rocks under the water, you don’t know what temperature the water is, etc etc. If you go down and first dip your toes in, do a few test dives, practice your form somewhat, then you can work your way up to the ‘big one.’ There will always be that aspect of the unknown, but as Geoffrey describes it it can become ‘the only thing that makes sense.’
By definition something in you thinks the petty desires are important! Again intellectually you know they’re ultimately stalling for time, but right now your Being doesn’t know that. What do you need to do to investigate them, to give them the attention that ‘You’ want? Again being a friend rather than an adversary…
Wasting life is a relative thing, all our lives are already wasting regardless of what we do. It’s also not all or nothing, to become even 10% more happy & harmless before you die means you’ve changed your life, was it really a complete waste? And if you’re being a freedom absolutist but you also find that your motivation is non-existent, isn’t it time for a shift in approach to see if you can get something to budge? There’s a certain amount of having to get gory to find out what works… how are you going to become free without getting your hands dirty?
Well the thinker isn’t really running the show, the feeler is. So you as a feeler have to know. If you knew then you wouldn’t even want to do it. It’s this simple.
Then you have 3 options:
Only option 3 is really a waste, the other two are both productive IMO
Well there’s two key pieces to my advice, adhering to pure intent and enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, being on the lookout for when they dips.
If you chase “petty desires” but are actually genuinely enjoying and appreciating while doing the chasing and reaping the fruits of the chasing, then perhaps it wasn’t a petty desire at all, perhaps it was a preference and you prefer to live your life that way.
If you do it yet find your enjoyment dipping, you get angry or frustrated, or find that the actual motivation for chasing is intrinsically malicious (like getting petty payback for what someone said or did) and it ranks your enjoyment, then by being aware you’ll just naturally see it’s silly and then you won’t desire to do it anymore.
It’s weird because all the PCEs I’ve had were spontaneous, so out of nowhere I find myself experiencing this other world of perfection, then looking back from that vantage point all those petty desires and real world concerns are no longer relevant.
But it’s when I am looking from within the real world that I find myself too attached to the various desires, concerns etc
I am in Singapore at the moment, I was walking through the city earlier and looking at the overwhelming lush greenery all around, I was almost overloaded with sensory pleasure and then right behind this experience there is this hushed stillness that becomes apparent, and I can immediately see that none of ‘my’ world is relevant there.
-Geoffrey, in a post in the music thread from 2021
RICHARD: What I am is the air breathed, the water drunk, the food eaten and the sunlight absorbed … thus I am nothing but ‘the stuff of which the universe is made’ (matter). The matter of the universe is both actual things (solid stuff) and active force (energetic stuff). The immeasurable amount of ‘stuff of the universe’ (either in its solid aspect or energetic phase) is perpetually arranging and rearranging itself in endless varieties of myriad form all over the boundless reaches of infinite space throughout the limitless extent of eternal time. This universe, being boundless and limitless (never beginning and never ending) is unborn and undying … as I remarked (further above): it is this universe which is immortal.
Mailing List 'B' Respondent No. 19
