Belief

RICHARD: Speaking personally, I cannot believe anything. The ability to believe – believing in itself – has vanished out of me. Which brings this discussion back to the believing activity of thought and feelings. You are asking, in effect: Is there some real ‘me’ to experience? Am ‘I’ real?

[!QUOTE] AI summary Based on the text provided, the phrase “the believer is the believed” encapsulates the core dilemma of the human condition as described by Richard: the “self” (or identity) is not a separate entity that possesses beliefs; rather, the “self” is composed entirely of beliefs and the feelings that fuel them.

[!quote] Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Beliefs and Psittacisms RICHARD: Unfortunately it is not such a simple matter as merely exposing and dropping beliefs and misconceptions. I would suggest asking who is doing the exposing and dropping. I would enquire into just who is holding the beliefs and misconceptions concerning an on-going self. ‘I’ cannot drop the belief that ‘I’ exist because ‘I’, the would-be ‘dropper’, am what is to be dropped. Like-wise, ‘I’ the would-be ‘exposer’, am what is to be exposed. Only apperceptive awareness will do the trick.

VINEETO: I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated.

To ‘trust’ someone – anyone at all – is to invite betrayal … to ‘trust’ someone is to impose a demand upon them that they may not be able to live up to (or want to) and I never do that. I have had no use for ‘trust’ at all: to ‘trust’ is to attract deception. Etymologically, ‘trust’ – a covenant with ‘The Truth’ – is in the same category as faith – loyalty to ‘The Truth’ – and both are aligned with belief. Belief means fervently wishing to be true. There is not much difference between ‘trust’ and faith … as a generalisation perhaps ‘trust’ is used more in spiritual circles, whereas faith is more aligned with the religious. ‘Trust’ seems to have more solid connotations than faith – to the spiritual aspirant, who scorns religion and all its trappings – yet, essentially they amount to the same. They all give rise to hope. Hope, the antidote to despair, is what most people live on. Living in hope – having faith or trusting – is a poor substitute for the living purity of the perfection of the actual. Hope sets one up for disappointment time and again … and all it is, is the antidote for despair. All trusting, believing, hoping and having faith and certitude are but the antidotes to distrust, disbelief, despair, doubt or suspicion.

[..] Trust is the ‘faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination’ … and faith is ‘belief, especially without evidence or proof’

RICHARD: The actualism method (‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’) is a method specifically designed to bring about a direct experience of the actual … the question is asked, each moment again, until it becomes an automatic approach to life or a wordless attitude to living. Initially it will be seen that how one is experiencing this moment is usually via a feeling or a belief (sometimes cunningly disguised as a ‘truth’) – and a belief is an emotion-backed thought anyway – thus effectively blocking the ‘direct sense experience’ . And for as long as one is experiencing this moment through a feeling – no matter how deep or profound the feeling may be – one is cutting oneself off from the splendour of the actual.

I don’t belong to any group and I have dared to acknowledge the fact that I am on my own – in fact, I as this flesh-and-blood body have been on my own all my life despite my feelings of belonging or not belonging. For the path to an actual freedom I rely on my own pure consciousness experiences to know what I want to achieve and I found that the method of actualism works to make me happy and harmless. There is neither belief nor devotion nor gratitude nor security nor following an authority figure – none of these emotional needs and bondages exist anymore.

RICHARD: With apperception, what one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ … a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any affective intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality … and I have always been here like this … so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety … a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions.

VINEETO: [..] belonging is about feeling part of a group for emotional support, for security of one’s beliefs and for company in loneliness and misery. I have experienced and examined my beliefs, emotions, instinctual passions, urges, needs and fears around this issue in me and they no longer have any impact on me.

[..] To defend the belief that this life is forever fatally flawed – defend to the point of idiocy – is actually a cowardly attempt to stay hidden inside ‘humanity’. To skulk behind a sick social contract is a desperate ploy to remain ‘human’. If one takes one’s intellectual ability back from the decrees of the cultured sophisticates – to which one has surrendered – one has taken a courageous step. One has cast oneself out of the biggest group there is … humanity. If one stays within the group, for its perceived safety and security, one is selling out to the system because of a pusillanimous character.

Vineeto explicitly links the romantic identity to her conditioned female identity. She notes that “love and empathy are praised as woman’s greatest virtues!” and that she had been conditioned to believe her “only identity and power had been to feel and express emotions”.

The human psyche is a bundle of emotions & beliefs forming one’s Identity (which includes Social Identity).

The other kind of dullness or stuckness I would describe as an ostrich-behaviour – the result of my fear to investigate the particular belief or behaviour pattern that was under scrutiny at the time. Eventually such periods of procrastination grew shorter as I more and more stubbornly refused to spoil this unique present moment of being alive by not investigating the issue at hand.

RICHARD: For something like twenty five years I was an agnostic … and it is an apparently satisfying position to be in as it makes one feel both intellectually comfortable and intellectually superior at the same time (whilst appearing humble) until one day I realised just what I was doing to myself … and to others. I was cleverly shuffling all the ‘hard questions’ about consciousness under the rug and going around deftly cutting other people down to size (which is all so easy to do simply by saying ‘well that is your belief/truth/idea/philosophy/whatever’). But I had nothing to offer in its place – other than the smug ‘nobody knows’ agnosticism – and I puzzled as to why this was so. Finally, I ceased procrastinating and equivocating. I wanted to know. I wanted to find out – for myself – about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. I now know. In short: there is a third alternative to either agnosticism or fideism.

In other words, one is then free to conform with the legal laws and observe the social protocols – to ‘go along with’, to ‘pay lip-service to’ – whilst no longer believing in them.

RICHARD: The most effective way to investigate all the beliefs, ideas, theories, concepts, maxims, dictums, truths, factoids, philosophies, values, principles, ideals, standards, credos, doctrines, tenets, canons, morals, ethics, customs, traditions, psittacisms, superstitions, myths, legends, folklores, imaginations, divinations, visions, fantasies, chimeras, illusions, delusions, hallucinations, phantasmagoria and any other of the schemes and dreams and mores which constitute social conditioning is the hands-on moment-to-moment approach – the on-the-job real-time experiencing where all the real-life people, things and events are currently occurring in a real-world context – rather than armchair philosophising.

However, once embarked upon the ‘wide and wondrous path’, you are not on your own: the perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe is with you all the way … but if you waver, you are indeed on your own. It is a matter of having the courage of your convictions and letting nothing stand in your way; determination and perseverance are the essential prerequisites to ensure success … coupled with application and diligence. Having the ‘courage of your convictions’ has nothing to do with believing, trusting, hoping or having faith that it be possible. I, for one, never believed, trusted, hoped or had faith that it was possible, for such an action of believing, trusting, hoping and having faith perpetuates the believer, the truster, the hoper and the faithful. On the contrary, I could no longer believe that it was not possible – which is a different action entirely to believing, trusting, hoping and having faith that it is possible – thus dispensing with the believer, the truster, the hoper and the faithful. Do you see this?

RICHARD: It is very important to have confidence in your own ability to discriminate between current human knowledge and what you personally know from your own peak experiences. This will give you that optimism that is the ability to plough on regardless of whatever stands in your way until you evoke your destiny. It is not a matter of having faith or believing that it is possible; it is not a matter of trusting or hoping that it will happen to you; it is all to do with the solid knowing, born out of the peak experience, that it is here for you and anyone … if only you will act upon your knowing. This ‘action’ amounts to – at times – ‘talking yourself into it’, for the other alternative is to let doubt and disbelief and distrust and despair eat away at your resolve. Only you can manifest your own freedom.

A mental image, in the context of the Psyche, is the internal, psychic representation we form of another person. It is the “story” or belief-structure we create about someone, composed of our own emotions, judgments, past experiences, and projections.

[!quote] Frequently Asked Questions – What are Instinctual Passions? RICHARD: ‘my’ survival being paramount could not be further from the truth, for ‘I’ need play no part any more in perpetuating physical existence (which is the primal purpose of the instinctual animal ‘self’). ‘I’ am no longer necessary at all. In fact, ‘I’ am nowadays a hindrance. With all of ‘my’ beliefs, values, creeds, ethics and other doctrinaire disabilities, ‘I’ am a menace to the body. ‘I’ am ready to die (to allow the body to be killed) for a cause and ‘I’ will willingly sacrifice physical existence for a ‘Noble Ideal’ … and reap ‘my’ post-mortem reward: immortality.

This meant that I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated.

The other kind of dullness or stuckness I would describe as an ostrich-behaviour – the result of my fear to investigate the particular belief or behaviour pattern that was under scrutiny at the time. Eventually such periods of procrastination grew shorter as I more and more stubbornly refused to spoil this unique present moment of being alive by not investigating the issue at hand.

I experience no fear whatsoever … which does away with the need for trust, faith, hope and belief. This is my on-going experience twenty four hours a day, year after year.