PETER: As an actualist, I always put the aim to be harmless towards my fellow human beings first and my aim for happiness second, because it is impossible for me be happy unless I am harmless. For anyone who is sincere about peace on earth it is essential to put becoming harmless first … and then increased happiness invariably follows. In the case in point, if one stops being sarcastic, as in expressing bitter or wounding remarks to others, then one has more chance of being happy … which in turn means that one has less reason to feel cynical …which in turn means one is less prone to be sarcastic and so on … until both cynicism and sarcasm eventually disappear as if by magic. It’s a fascinating business to see, and experientially understand, how feelings are interlinked, how they produce an endless cycle of ups and downs, how there is a continuous tendency to wound and then feel wounded, how there is a seesaw sequence of excitement and boredom … and so on.
PETER: No, it is nothing personal. There have been about one thousand Enlightened Ones, according to one figure I have read, and all of them were deluded, and all of them promised the un-deliverable. They only have power and authority because people desperately want to believe the fairy stories of an ‘after-life’ and another ‘world’. This belief in the Divine-ness of the God-men is given credence by the feelings of love for Them and the self-gratifying feeling of being a chosen one. The chance for a genuine personal peace and an actual global peace is forfeited on the altars of the God-men – all for a bit of utterly selfish ‘feel-good’.
As feeling beings we are very susceptible to psychic emissions from others and this is part and parcel of our instinctual survival mechanism. Apart from considerations for my physical safety when somebody gets angry, I found that my core fear in these situations was to be ‘found out’ for the fraud ‘I’ am – as Alan said it so succinctly in his recent letter to Richard. It’s been an ongoing process from realizing for the first time in a pure consciousness experience that ‘I’ am a fraud to translating this realization into daily discoveries as to how much this alien impostress has been running, and ruining, my life. As I am the one who on my own accord is investigating my own fraudulent existence, nobody else can expose me more than I am already doing so myself! And I am not only admitting that ‘I’ am a fraud, ‘I’ am also ready and willing to take the cure – ‘self’-immolation.
RESPONDENT No 33: If you do not find the root cause/trigger of what has caused the loss of felicitous feeling, then the method has not been given its full chance.
I had this experience yesterday: I suddenly found myself amidst deep sorrow which I had described before. it was growing taking various shapes, calling all those instances that I had erred, guilt ridden, feeling other person’s sorrow, blaming how cold I had been to ‘No 60’ in my mails, fearing an attack from ‘No 60’ and ‘No 53’ etc. I was once again in the midst of some seemingly unresolvable situation.
Then I said, no matter what I am going to exactly practise actualism method. I am going to recollect the last moment I felt good, and trace the trigger. I couldn’t do it. amazing amount of resistance. I hated the method. I didn’t want to go ahead. I wanted to watch the growing sorrow instead. But I said, I have to do it. No other choice. It took me 10 minutes or so and finally I was convinced that I had to find out the trigger.
And the trigger I found. I wasn’t convinced … it was a lot of trial and error search … but I found it all right. I couldn’t have found it from watching the evolution of the feelings … it was totally different. It was a total surprise. Then I finally understood actualism method. You keep finding the triggers to feeling bad and replace them with sense and disable them … you do it with common sense by feeling good as soon as possible. As long as you do not do this, you will be triggered again and again and again and you will experience the same old in different forms due to the same reasons.
So, actualism method does exactly what is required: not more, not less.
I am more and more surprised that in spite of my participation and claiming various things all along, I hadn’t put the method into practise 100%. I talk more, contradict myself a lot. But I am glad that things are dropping.
RESPONDENT No. 60:The way Richard put it, it sounded like he was able to simply choose the way he felt, and seemed surprised that others could not.
RESPONDENT:It does sort of give that impression.
RICHARD: It does far more than merely give that impression … it is precisely what I am saying. For a recent instance:
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I think its important to be free of malice (…) but I’m not sure why we need to free of sorrow.
• [Richard]: ‘You do not need to be free of sorrow (or malice) … it is your choice, and your choice alone, each moment again as to how you prefer to experience this moment of being alive (the only moment you are ever alive)’.
If then choosing to be as happy and as harmless (as free of both malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) as was humanly possible thus makes the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body, back in 1981, a freak of nature then so too is my current companion as she comprehended right from the beginning that it is her choice, and her choice alone, each moment again as to how she prefers to experience this moment of being alive (the only moment she is ever alive) … and which would also make my previous companion a freak of nature as well (not forgetting to mention, of course and for the very reason of it being topical, both Peter and Vineeto too).
Incidentally, the identity in residence in 1981 was not surprised that others could not but, rather, that others would not (having a victim mentality, it turned out, ran much deeper than the singular mentation such nomenclature indicates).
Much, much deeper … so much so as to be past fixation, entrenchment, and well into being an impressment, an embedment bordering on an embodiment.
RESPONDENT No. 6:If you will indulge my question: is it possible still to have actual intimacy, even if the partner (man/woman) is evidently inhibited by self and survival instincts?
RICHARD: Actual intimacy – no separation (no separative self whatsoever) cannot wax and wane/ come and go/ switch on and off here in this actual world (the world of the senses). Upon an actual freedom from the human condition an actual intimacy is the norm with every body and every thing regardless of whatever their or its current situation and circumstances might be.
(Some peoples have looked at me blankly upon being informed there is an actual intimacy with, say, an ashtray or a polystyrene cup or a pebble or whatever).
In terms of human sexuality, and due to its utter proximity, sexual congress sans identity/ affections is the exquisite experience of two flesh and blood bodies sensuously delighting in being sensually and sexually aroused.
(As there are no identities in actuality I actually interact only with flesh and blood bodies; at times this can be quite disconcerting, to say the least, for any identity feeling itself to be other than illusory).
“Now, when confronted with my fears and judgements instead of berating myself for my shortcomings one sees it as a new opportunity to investigate and explore and usually lose a few kilos of identity. Fear as an ally … who would ever think.”
-Mark
Also:
“ I have become keenly aware of the fact that my mind spends an inordinate amount of the time imagining myself to be anywhere but here and now – imagining myself in the future, imagining myself in conversation, imagining myself in a thousand different ways, situations and localities and it is such a joy to be discovering that being here takes no imagination at all!
I think i got all the ‘harmlessness’ ones, the last one you posted here was about ‘love’, I’ll leave it here. but if you want to have longer discussion then delete this one and make new topic pls
RICHARD: Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. As strange as it may initially seem, gratitude has the same deleterious effect upon one’s well-being as the resentment it seeks to reform. When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’, ‘Virtue’ and ‘Sin’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Despair’, ‘Gratitude’ and ‘Resentment’, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity. Purity is the hall-mark of the stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe … which is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. Unless the factuality of the existence of the third alternative is firmly grasped, one is forever fated to shuttle back and forth between the opposites. Gratitude simply does not work for it draws its energy from resentment itself … and from nowhere else. Gratitude feeds off resentment – one cannot be grateful unless one is first resentful – and one cannot maintain any emotion without retaining its opposite. Neither does one adopt that other stratagem: transcendence. Transcendence is a form of sublimation … to transcend is to confirm and endorse the reality of the opposites. One disposes of all these pathetic methods very simply: By being here now as this flesh and blood body.
Being here now is to put your money where your mouth is, as it were. All other actions are methods, devices, techniques … which are, in effect, delaying tactics. The most sincere form of flattery is not, as is commonly practised, imitating all the other people’s performance of standing back and expressing a feeling. To feel an emotion or be passionate about life is nowhere near the same as actually being here now. In being here now one is completely involved. Being here now is total inclusion. One demonstrates one’s appreciation of life by partaking fully in existence … by letting this moment live one so that one is doing what is happening. One dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here now as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ willingly and voluntarily sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological or psychic identity residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what one holds most dear.
I remember telling a friend about giving up both the pair of opposites - gratitude and resentment…to which she asked for a practical example of some situation where this works…
I have to admit I couldn’t come up with an example at the time which means I was just parroting Richard at the time hehe…it seemed to me then that gratitude and resentment is only about the resentment towards the universe and then the gratitude towards it…or is there any other practical example from daily life where resentment n gratitude can be given up ?
That is a funny question, the first thing that comes to mind is that both gratitude & resentment are happening on the emotional-energetic spectrum, so it’s not as directly applicable to like ‘practical decisions,’ except that how we’re feeling in every moment colors every practical decision we make and is therefore a very practical thing to pay attention to
Aah @henryyyyyyyyyy I see how you mean…I was meaning it in terms of triggers/events from daily life and the ensuing resentment n grief saga.
Like for example anger and its triggers…queue cutter seen at a checkout queue > anger or partner has read the message but not replied > pissed/worried
But then I get the point about gratitude n resentment being in the affective spectrum of good n bad feelings…what’s important is instead to use appreciation as that’s more of a cognitive appraisal based on the value of something
Oh I think there’s so many everyday examples! For example - “You should stop worrying about earning more money and be grateful that you have a roof over your head, some people in the world don’t.”
The gratitude in this example is used as a means to overcome one’s fundamental resentment - life is shit, I don’t have anything good going for me etc. It is the good being laid over the bad, thus reinforcing the reality of both opposites and keeping one trapped in the cycle of resentment and gratitude.
The third alternative would be of course to appreciate as opposed to being resentful/grateful.
