“Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body”
non-spiritual · 180° opposite to spiritual enlightenment · already always here
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This very moment is your only moment of being alive
This page is a map of what Richard — the first person to describe an actual freedom from the human condition — has communicated about how anyone can go from wherever they are now to being actually free. Everything in quotation marks is his, verbatim, checked word-for-word against his writing at actualfreedom.com.au.
“…this moment is the only moment of being alive; this is the only moment to feel good in, for the past is no longer, the future is not yet and the present is but an illusion sandwiched betwixt the two.”
Two things make this approach unlike anything else on offer. First, it is not spiritual: no god, no soul, no meditation, no surrender, no guru, no afterlife, no ‘higher consciousness’. Richard calls the spiritual path “going 180 degrees in the wrong direction”. Second, it is not resignation to ‘normal’ life either. It is a third alternative — and it starts from something you have already experienced.
The third alternative
Three worlds — only one is actual
Until now humans have had two choices: stay ‘normal’ or become ‘spiritual’. Richard reports a third possibility, found by going in the opposite direction entirely.
choice one — illusion
The ‘real’ world
The grim and glum everyday reality almost everyone lives in: getting by, being ‘only human’, nursing resentments, seeking relief in possessions, relationships, achievement. It feels solid — but it is generated by the identity inside, layered over the actual.
“‘I’ may be real ... but ‘I’ am not actual. Reality is not actuality. Reality is a world-view created and sustained by emotive thought.”
choice two — delusion
The ‘spiritual’ world
The traditional escape: transcend the ego, awaken to a Greater Reality, become one with the Divine. The ego may dissolve — but the soul survives, aggrandised into a ‘Self’. An illusion is swapped for a delusion. Richard lived this state for eleven years before going beyond it.
After five millennia of saints, sages and saviours, the ‘Tried and True’ is, in his words, the ‘Tried and Failed’.
the third alternative — actual
The actual world
This physical universe, right here: the world of the senses, already perfect and pure, hidden in plain sight behind the other two. It becomes apparent when the identity — both ‘I’ the ego and ‘me’ the soul — ends.
“In actual freedom I am neither ‘human’ nor Divine, for I am not metaphysical. I am the third alternative: this very actual body.”
“To be seeking spiritual freedom is to be going 180 degrees in the wrong direction”
— Richard, 180 Degrees Opposite. Inward and upward to a timeless, spaceless, formless ‘Reality’ — or out, here, into the sensate world of this body. Same starting point; opposite directions.
Where you are
The human condition — you were born into it
Nothing is wrong with you personally. Every human is born with the same genetic endowment of instinctual survival passions — chiefly fear and aggression and nurture and desire — and out of them a phantom inhabitant forms.
“The genetically inherited passions (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) give rise to malice and sorrow.”
Humans, able to think and reflect on their own mortality, have inflated the rudimentary animal ‘self’ into two identities in the one body: ‘I’ as ego (a ‘thinker’ in the head) and ‘me’ as soul (a ‘feeler’ in the heart). There are “three I’s altogether but only one is actual” — this flesh-and-blood body itself.
All the wars, murders, rapes, domestic violence and despair — and your private sadness and irritability — trace back to these passions, not to politics, parenting or pollution. Which is remarkably good news:
“There is only one person in this whole wide world that one can change ... myself.”
“How on earth can one live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst one nurses malice and sorrow in one’s bosom?”
Your touchstone
You have already glimpsed the destination
A pure consciousness experience (PCE) is a moment — seconds, minutes, sometimes hours — when the identity spontaneously goes into abeyance and the actual world is directly apparent: everything already perfect, pure, intimate, alive. Richard reports that everyone has had at least one, usually in childhood, though it is generally forgotten or explained away.
worry … resentment … comparison … boredom … “what’s wrong with me?” … hope … dread … the endless commentary
‘I’/‘me’ in charge — the ‘real’ worldidentity in abeyance — the actual world
“In the PCE, ‘I’ temporarily abdicated the throne and I knew, by direct experience, that freedom was already actual. It was ‘me’ that was the problem, not the absence of perfection.”
Recognising a PCE in your own memory
Sit down and deliberately recall the standout moments of your life — people rarely volunteer these memories for fear of sounding odd. Marks of a genuine PCE:
Everything was seen to be already perfect — nothing needed fixing or adding.
Stunning clarity and immediacy of the senses: colours, sounds, textures vivid and near.
An actual intimacy with everything and everyone — no separation, no ‘observer’.
Purity and benignity everywhere; hurting or being hurt simply could not arise.
No feelings ran the show — neither ecstasy nor bliss, but crystalline, delight-filled calm.
The absolute certainty, while it lasted, that this is how life actually is.
This memory matters: “The peak experience provides an objective standpoint to view the identity from.” ‘I’ cannot see past ‘myself’ by thinking or feeling, but the PCE shows what is here when ‘I’ am not. Recalled and taken seriously, it gives rise to pure intent:
“Pure intent is the connection between the intimate aspect of oneself, that one usually keeps hidden away for fear of seeming foolish, and the purity of the peak experience.”
“Diligent mindfulness paid to the peak experience gives rise to pure intent.” And: “Pure intent is the highway to this utter freedom, to one’s destiny ... and it is a wide and wondrous path.”
⚠ Not to be confused with a ‘spiritual experience’
In an altered state of consciousness (ASC) — satori, samadhi, oneness, rapture, ‘being Love’ — the ego dissolves but the feeling-core swells: a grand ‘Me’ arises, everything glows with Love and Beauty, one feels Timeless and Immortal. A PCE has none of that: no feelings run it, no ‘Being’, no divinity — just this actual world, magically and factually here. If passion comes “rushing in” during a PCE, it devolves into an ASC, complete with a super-self. The two point in opposite directions; mistaking one for the other is how seekers end up enlightened instead of free.
The practice
The actualism method
“How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?”
asked each moment again — with one crucial clarification:
“…asking how one is experiencing this moment of being alive is not the actualism method; consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is.”
The question is the alarm-clock, not the practice. The practice is to make feeling good your bottom line of experience, and to treat any dip below it as useful information — “the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world.”
“How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?” — the only moment you are ever alive.
Notice the dip
“…if one is not feeling good right now, then that is a signal that something is amiss.” The slightest diminishment of felicity is “a flashing red light”.
Find the trigger
Locate what happened between feeling good last and now — no childhood archaeology: “usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most”.
See the silliness
See how silly it is to let that event spoil this only moment of being alive — “nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand”.
Back to feeling good
Felicity restores itself once the cause is seen. Neither wallow in the feeling nor squash it — “nothing is suppressed ... and nothing is expressed”.
Enjoy & appreciate
Sensuousness: delight in being here — seeing, hearing, tasting, touching. Wonder and marvel “can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception)”.
It is
Sincere, never solemn — “Be totally sincere ... most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential. But serious ... no way.”
Feeling-aware, not feeling-suppressing — you cannot examine a feeling you deny having; feelings are investigated, minimised, and the freed-up energy channelled into felicity.
Immediate — “It delivers the goods just here, right now, and not off into some indeterminate future.” Repeatable successes, “virtually on demand”.
For here — a prerequisite: you have to want to be here, on this planet, as this body. The method brings you fully here.
Up-levelling — “one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ ... and after that to ‘feeling perfect’.”
It is not
Not meditation or mindfulness — no sitting, no watching ‘the now’, no witness; it runs in the marketplace, at work, washing dishes.
Not positive thinking — triggers are found and seen through, not papered over with affirmations.
Not stoicism — a ‘stripped-down’ self is impossible: “‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’”. The being goes first, not the feelings.
Not analysis from the pit — when feeling bad, get back to neutral first; “a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing the magical event” to occur.
Not waiting for grace — “All one gets by waiting is more waiting.”
The wide and wondrous path
The journey, stage by stage
“There is a wide and wondrous path to actual freedom: One asks oneself, each moment again, ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?” The path below is assembled from Richard’s own descriptions. Scroll — the dot is you.
The destination: this actual world
“Here in this actual world, which is where this body is living anyway, is the peace that everyone says they are searching for.”
Permanent. Non-spiritual. As this flesh-and-blood body, for the term of its natural life — and then death is the end. “Life is not a vale of tears.”
“I am this physical universe experiencing itself as a reflective, sensate human being; as me, the universe is intelligent…”
Why “non-spiritual” is not a detail
180 degrees opposite
Actual freedom is routinely mistaken for yet another awakening teaching. It is the reverse of one. Richard lived spiritual enlightenment for eleven years before discovering what lies in the opposite direction — every line below is from his article “180 Degrees Opposite”.
spiritual freedom
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actual freedom
The fork in the road
ASC or PCE — the moment that decides a lifetime
Both ‘peak’ experiences start with the ego falling silent. What happens next determines whether one glimpses one’s actual destiny — or an imaginary one.
altered state of consciousness (ASC)
pure consciousness experience (PCE)
“When ‘I’ ceased to be, perfection became, as always, apparent.”
Why he can compare both
Richard’s own route — the long way around
Richard did it the hard way: through enlightenment and out the other side. The method he describes lets you skip the eleven-year detour.
“This is an actual freedom. It is possible to be actually free, here on earth, as this body, in this lifetime.” And: “It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of ‘being’; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond Spiritual Enlightenment.”
Speak actualese
Glossary
Richard uses ordinary words with surgical precision. These are the load-bearing terms.
“This moment is your only moment of being alive ... one is never alive at any other time than now.”