Delight

RICHARD: You need to have a keen sense of humour. This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all. Be totally sincere … most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential. But serious … no way. Humour is essential – it is inevitable in an actual freedom – and one has a lot of fun along the way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. All that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. One has to want to be here on this planet … most people resent being here and wish to escape. This method will bring one into being more fully here than anyone has ever been before. If you do not want to be here, then forget it.

And indeed each issue investigated, each belief discarded resulted in lifting an emotional weight off my shoulders and as a direct consequence, life has become easy and enjoyable. You could also say that ‘I’, the complainer, the controller, the moaner and groaner has all but left the stage.

Once I’m back home in my apartment, I decided to wash my face in the bathroom sink. The EE resumed, and I felt it during splashing that water in my face - the sensations (the feeling of touch, the warmth of the soapy water, and the suffusing amber of the bathroom) were intense, delightful and being experienced with a thoroughness unlike before. I go back to my room to sit on my Poang chair. This time, instead of starting Age of Empires 3 (as I normally do that time), I decided to just sit and do nothing for no reason in particular. I remember sitting there doing nothing for about an hour, just enjoying being alive - and the visual ambiance of my room (equally yellow-lit).

RICHARD: [..] the actualism method segues into what has become known as the actualism process when the actualism method has become so automatic, via habituation, that one is walking about in a state of wide-eyed wonder (naiveté) simply marvelling at being alive (sensuosity) and being amazed/ delighted that all this – the world about/the universe itself – is occurring in the first place; the actualism process is when it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the difference between one doing it (doing this business called being alive) and it happening of its own accord; when one becomes the experiencing of being alive/of it all occurring of its own accord one is then out-from-control (not ‘out of control’ as in wayward) and a different-way-of-being has ensued.

RICHARD: Any sense of naiveté, no matter how small, is to be encouraged … and the cultivation of naiveté (the closest approximation to innocence a ‘self’ can be) via sincerity is, of course, enhanced by delighting in being alive on this wondrous paradise called planet earth.

Such imitative felicity/ innocuity, in conjunction with sensuosity, readily evokes amazement, marvel, and delight – a state of wide-eyed wonder best expressed by the word naiveté (the nearest a ‘self’ can come to innocence whilst being a ‘self’) – and which allows the overarching benignity and benevolence inherent to the infinitude, which this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe actually is, to operate more and more freely. This intrinsic benignity and benevolence, which has nothing to do with the imitative affective happiness and harmlessness, will do the rest.

RICHARD: As a broad generalisation: the ‘good’ feelings are those that are of a loving (ardent feelings of profound affection and endearment) and a compassionate (empathetic feelings of deep sympathy and commiseration) nature; the ’bad feelings are those that are of a malicious (spiteful feelings of intense hatred and resentment) and a sorrowful (melancholy feelings of yawning sadness and grief) nature; the felicitous feelings are those that are of a happy and carefree (blithesome feelings of great delight and enjoyment) nature; the innocuous feelings are those that are of a harmless and congenial (gracious feelings of ingenuous tranquillity and affability) nature.

The way to deal with resentment in the actualism method is the same way you deal with all other feelings that interfere with you being happy and harmless – when paying attention to how you experience this moment of being alive, you notice it, then label it which helps you realise that it would be silly to carry on with it when you can instead enjoy being alive. With a steady increase in attentiveness the shift of resenting being here to appreciating being here becomes progressively easier until you finally kick the insidious habit of resentment altogether and delight in being alive for the simple reason that you are alive.

PETER: The commonly held belief is that the excitement and tension that results from instinctual fear is essential to feeling alive and many actively court danger in order to ride the rush of fear. Contrary to this belief, the experience of the near-elimination of instinctual fear allows the thrill of doing what is happening to become increasingly apparent – and this includes doing nothing really well. Again it is universally upheld as a truth that one needs the instinct of aggression, currently manifest in the phrase ‘standing up for my rights’, or else I will be trampled, done in, taken advantage of, etc. What is discovered is quite the opposite, for one increasingly discovers that the actual world is a safe place, brim full of serendipity, delight and wonder.

PETER: You need a good deal of gas in the tank initially and eventually you’ll come to a stage when you find yourself careering along, looking for the brakes and finding there are none. Then, as soon as you dare to, you take your hands off the wheel and sit back and be aware of doing what is happening and amazement, wonder and delight come flooding in to fill the hole that is left when ‘you’ temporarily abdicate the throne. When you do this often enough, and find that the actual world is not only safe but pure and perfect, you become aware of your destiny.

[Peter]: For me the main event is always here and now, which means if I am living with someone then I have no concern about when, how or if it will end. If I am not happy now, if I am annoyed, moody, discontent, out of it, lacklustre, sad or whatever then I am somewhere else but here and now, not doing what is happening in this moment of time. By fully taking on board the fact that this very moment is the only moment I can experience, means that I have abandoned the idea of postponement. For me there is no end of this relationship for, if it happens, it is not happening now. The exquisiteness and sensual delight of being here, doing what is happening, means the ending of the idea that I am coming from somewhere or that I am going somewhere. Freedom lies in being absolutely locked into, and fully committed to this very moment of time – to fully embrace being a flesh and blood human being on this paradisiacal material earth.

R: Ripples of pleasure throughout your entire body. From the tips of your toes to the top of your head. The sheer pleasure of being alive, of being here doing this business of living this moment. Does it seem like it does away with the need to have a sexual orgasm?

Furthermore, for such a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being who is also at all thoughtful about life, the universe and what it is to be living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, any such idea of ‘feeling-good-for-its-own-sake’ ̶ let alone enjoying and appreciating being able to experience that general feeling of well-being (as in, an engaged relishing of feeling good and, thus, intimately approving being alive/ being here, by virtue of that personal delectation of ‘feeling good’ per se) as well – is a betrayal of all what they fervently hold intellectually dear, about the world in general and the human race in particular, as for them life itself is, essentially, a bum rap (an unjust punishment) when all is said and done.