Being here now

VINEETO: Actualism is about living in the world as it is with people as they are. I am not intending to change other people – or the world – but I whittle away at removing what prevents me from being happy and harmless right here, right now.

PETER: I also found it essential to stop beating myself up and start liking myself, to start to enjoy my own company which in turn led me to start being interested in being here, which in turn led to a naïve curiosity about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being.

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.

Richard: Sensuousness is the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space – which awareness is combined with the fascination of contemplating that this moment is one’s only moment of being alive – and one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever one is … now … one is always here … now … even if one starts walking over to ‘there’ … now … along the way to ‘there’ … now … one is always here … now … and when one arrives ‘there’ … now … it too is here … now.

RICHARD: Being here now, as this body, is to be living inside eternal time. In here lies security, utter safety. Nothing can go ultimately wrong inside eternal time, all is forever well. It is only when one thinks and feels that ‘I’ exist that the troubles begin. To locate this entity, one has only to tune into the feeling of ‘being’. In ‘being’ there is a sense of ‘presence’, a feeling of being present. [..]

RICHARD: Pure contemplation is not thinking ‘about’ something … which is the usual way of thought. Pure contemplation does not take a duration of time. It is instant thought, a realisation, a flash of seeing. In pure contemplation ‘I’ do no thinking … thinking does itself. ‘I’ have no substance, therefore in pure contemplation there is thinking without a ‘thinker’. Thought operates freely … and in immaculate wonder. Pure contemplation is a state of unsullied wonderment: ‘how can this world happen?’, or ‘what is this universe doing here?’, or ‘where does this body come from?’. These questions are posed in such a way so as not to get a thought-out answer, but to simply wonder, in a pure contemplation of the actual. One stays with the notion: ‘I am this body’ and regards that magical world of the PCE. Opening up to that fairy tale-like world by seeing that it is indeed possible now makes it close … so close as to be already here. It is always already here. Regard the very best as possible for oneself … and for all human beings. There is a must in pure contemplation that something amazing can happen: all of a sudden ‘I’ am no more and the actual is already here. I am here where I always have been. http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedwriting/sw-universe.htm

Once I’m back home in my apartment, I decided to wash my face in the bathroom sink. The PCE 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).

Ear drums are revelling and reverberating with a concomitant (unintended) act of ‘arriving here’^* - notably (idiosyncratic to me) in the visual field (that familiar ever-present sense of “me” being present in between the eyes has now dissolved, enough to be arriving ‘here’^* where this living room is silently located).

I also found it essential to stop beating myself up and start liking myself ❤️, to start to enjoy my own company which in turn led me to start being interested in being here 📆, which in turn led to a naïve curiosity about life, the universe 🌄 and what it is to be a human being.

In other words the focus is upon how identity in toto is standing in the way of the already always existing peace-on-earth being apparent just here right now.

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.

Hence being (affectively) aware, each moment again, of more and more subtle variations in the quality of one’s moment-to-moment enjoyment and appreciation of being alive/ of being here so as to earlier and earlier pre-empt any potential reversion to type.

Richard: To get out of ‘stuckness’ one gets off one’s backside and does whatever one knows best to activate delight. Delight is what is humanly possible, given sufficient pure intent obtained from the felicity/ innocuity born of the pure consciousness experience, and from the position of delight, one can vitalise one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all … and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive now. Then one is no longer intuitively making sense of life … the delicious wonder of it all drives any such instinctive meaning away. Such luscious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté – the nourishing of which is essential if fascination in it all is to occur – and the charm of life itself easily engages dedication to peace-on-earth. Then, as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is … and one is the experiencing of what is happening. But refrain from possessing it and making it your own … or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared.

Plus the more one enjoys and appreciates being alive simply by being here, each moment again for as much as is humanly possible (editor: See Actualism Method), the lower the cost-of-living becomes as less and less discretionary spending is used-up in purchased entertainment, in socialising expenditure (e.g., fashion-house attire, designer-driven accoutrements, status-displaying automobiles, and etcetera), in mood-enhancement payments, in novelty-seeking travel costs, and so on and so forth.

PETER: There seems to be a very deep-set misunderstanding that arises even from the running of the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive??’ for the traditional approach would be – am ‘I’ feeling safe and comfortable ‘inside’ this body despite what is happening in the rock-solid world ‘out there’? This approach to the question merely perpetuates the self as an entity that is separate from the actual world, it does nothing to actively demolish and break down the barriers that prevents one as a mortal flesh and blood body being fully immersed in and engaged in the business of doing what is happening, right here and now in the physical, rock-solid actual world. This actual freedom is 180 degrees opposite to the spiritual freedom which is the escape from being here, right now in this only moment one can experience being alive.

RICHARD: Are you able to contemplate the atmosphere of your pure consciousness experience? By contemplation I do not mean trying to feel the experience; a peak experience is not a matter of emotions and passions, it is in a realm of its own, as you may remember. Contemplation, to work successfully, needs to be pure … stripped of emotive thought. For a moment allow yourself to set aside – not give up – your psychological state of ‘being’, which is occupied by the latest accumulation of worries and preoccupations. Make all of your identity unimportant, for now, and contemplate the perfection of being here now. Allow this moment to live you, instead of you living in the present. Experience yourself as being the doing of what is happening. An immediate peace and calm emerges and all is wiped clean, allowing a three-hundred-and-sixty degree awareness to operate. It is like having eyes in the back of your head. In this clean atmosphere you can freely allow the pure quality of the immediacy of this moment to become paramount. It is of itself not at all concerned with the culturally defined personality you were just before; it takes no notice of any ‘problem’ that has just been plaguing you and is calmly unperturbed by any psychological interference. Instantly the friendly solution to all humankind’s problems lies open all around. It is a condition which cannot be mistaken as anything else than authentic, as it is your very character. It is the simple, actual quality of the universe itself … it is a magical world … a fairytale-like wonderland. In this, the actual world, love, worship and adulation – the whole Spiritual gamut of surrender and obedience – do not play a role. Divinity has become obsolete as a solution, because what you are seeing and experiencing now is pre-eminent. An intimacy closer than you have ever been with yourself, as you normally are, has replaced everything else … this kind familiarity has superseded all what humans have ever believed as being The Truth.

RICHARD: The activity of attentiveness reminds one of why one is doing this: in actualism, one puts one’s attention on being here … now. When feelings cause one’s awareness to wander from actualism’s focus, it is attentiveness that reminds one that one’s mind is being manipulated … and why one is doing this happening called being alive. It is attentiveness that brings one back to the object of actualism: apperception.

Soon one finds that a switch has been made from being resentful at having to be here to resenting and wanting to eliminate whatever it is that prevents one from being here.

The only way I can reach this 100% redundancy is by being here all the time, doing what is happening without emotionally interfering – and if there is an emotion, then investigating it, nutting it out, sitting it out, thinking it through, understanding its follies and furphies. In the end, every emotion is understood as nothing but an objection to and fear of being here – and an objection to being redundant as an entity.

[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?

Richard: It happens on its own in that, as ‘I’ am the instinctual passions and the instinctual passions are ‘me’, there is no way that ‘I’ can end ‘me’. What ‘I’ do is that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button – which is to acquiesce – which precipitates an oft-times alarming but always thrilling momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. The acquiescing is that one thus dedicates oneself to being here as the universe’s experience of itself now … it is the unreserved !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body. Peace-on-earth is the inevitable result of such devotion because it is already here … it is always here now. ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ was merely standing in the way of the always already existing perfect purity from becoming apparent by sitting back and moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all (as epitomised in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’). How can one be forever sticking one’s toe in and testing out the waters and yet expect to be able to look at oneself in the mirror each morning with dignity. The act of initiating this ‘process’ – acquiescence – is to embrace death.

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.

[Richard]: ‘Speaking personally, the first thing I did in 1981 was to put an end to anger once and for all … then I was freed enough to live in virtual freedom. It took me about three weeks and I have never experienced anger^* since then. The first step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for I located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ This is why remembering a PCE is so important for success for it shows one, first hand, that freedom is already always here … now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind … that basic resentment goes. Then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger forever. One does this by neither expressing or repressing anger when an event happens that would previously trigger an outbreak. Anger is thus put into a bind … and the third alternative hoves into view’.

Hence being (affectively) aware, each moment again, of more and more subtle variations in the quality of one’s moment-to-moment enjoyment and appreciation of being alive/ of being here so as to earlier and earlier pre-empt any potential reversion to type.

RICHARD: Okay. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness does not mean a thing if one is miserable now … and a hoped-for happiness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting.