Transcript of Ari Akritidis’s
WTM Melbourne Centre video

 

(To learn more about Ari, see www.wtmmelbourne.com/testimonials)

 

 

Hi, I’m Ari Akritidis and I’m really excited to be supporting the WTM Melbourne Centre in Australia.

I came across the WTM about 15 years ago through my youngest brother, Sam. He read the book A Species In Denial (one of Jeremy’s earlier books) and shared it with me in around 2005. It took a while for me to really get my head around the information.

One of the fascinating things with my own personal journey has been my experience with the ‘deaf effect’ [the difficulty of engaging with the human condition is explained in Video/​Freedom Essay 1]. I experienced it incredibly head-on when I read A Species In Denial because I read the whole book, 500 and something pages, and literally understood nothing and took nothing out of that experience. My brother advised me to just put it away and come back to it when I’m ready, which I did about 12 months later and it’s extraordinary because I read the same book but this time I opened up my mind. I put aside my pre-conditioned ideas, my pre-conditioned beliefs and views. And that was a great first step because a lot of the things that I couldn’t see the first time round I saw now and it was quite extraordinary. Everything was there, and yet the first time I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t hear it.

I was living a life based on power, fame, fortune and glory and without subconsciously knowing but now understanding why, just feeding my insecurities, feeding my need for validation and reinforcement, as most people do. And in that state it’s not easy to see something that tries to go deeper because I’ve created this bubble, I’ve created this world and it’s working: “I’m going okay, I’m a dad, I’m a husband, have kids and I’m running a business. I’ve got good friends, I’ve got a good house.” So it’s a really tough barrier to break. It’s like, “Okay, so let’s say you’re right, let’s say the information is right. Then what? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to change who I am? Do you want me to stop being an egocentric, angry male, which I am? What am I going to do, just transform overnight into someone that’s gentle and loving and cooperative?”

So for me that ‘deaf effect’ was very, very strong and very, very real. You know this information is very, very powerful and it’s just that it takes time. So I eventually got through the ‘deaf effect’ with a lot of support and just being patient; being patient and re-reading, dealing with the emotions. You know there are emotions—there’s initially an element of fear and there’s uncertainty, confusion. But eventually it’s just ecstasy—when you read and listen with an open mind, it’s ecstasy. Beating the ‘deaf effect’ is certainly my greatest achievement!

Before I came across this information, I now realise that I was a ‘power addict’, what we would refer to in the old world as a control freak, with an addiction to power at a subconscious level [the ‘power addicted’ state is explained in chapter 8:16D of FREEDOM]. And that power doesn’t have to be a world-conquering power; it’s your own power, it’s the power of getting a degree, the power of running a business, the power of being the life of the party. It’s just the power and the energy and the feeding off that need for reinforcement, and the egocentricity that just inevitably comes with that. What I needed to realise was how much that power was important to me to reinforce my own goodness, because I didn’t know if I was good. There’s a part of me that was wrestling with this underlying question: “Am I good or am I bad?” It’s there, it’s festering below the surface and that’s what feeds your behaviour. And to break free of that, to be able to see that clearly now, can only be done when you’re understood, when you understand yourself. Certainly, being able to see that now, and appreciate the necessity of that strategy, has been gold for me, it’s absolutely gold.

Without this understanding I wouldn’t be able to admit all of my behaviours and strategies because I was too insecure. That’s the strategy we had to adopt. That’s the amazing paradox with this: none of that’s condemning, that’s the heroic part. We built up the denial and the blocks so well that, in my case, that delusion was my reality. And delusion is not a dirty word in the context of this conversation. So that’s heroic. It’s a different me [now]. I look at that Ari of two or three years ago and that person is a distant memory. So that’s the message: this information is so powerful and so true that you don’t have to fear. You can look at yourself, you can rat on yourself, you can laugh at yourself, because you’re completely defended and you’re a hero.

I look at the world now with totally different eyes. When you see the madness in yourself, then you can see it everywhere and then that’s where the compassion kicks in, because you want everybody to not have to suffer that condition, to not have to live in a mad world without ever knowing it’s mad. That’s an awful place to be.

That’s the power of Jeremy’s explanations. There’s no fantasy here, there’s no myth, there’s no pretending, there’s no dogma. It’s just an explanation of ourselves and as confronting as that is the first time around, what could possibly be more important than knowledge, knowledge of yourself.

On a personal level, the information has helped me massively; it’s helped me in my relationship with my wife, it’s helped me in my relationship with my children, and it’s helped me in my relationship with my friends and my staff. I still run a business, we have partners, we’ve got staff. There’s an inherent, instant compassion.

So you see, the information is very, very clear. There is no condemnation. There is no shame. There is no guilt. As humans, whatever we did, whenever we did it, we were a product of a condition that just magnified in size as each generation went on. It wasn’t a choice. We were born into this and we had to go through certain processes, including Resignation at a young age [Resignation is the psychological process whereby adolescents wrestle with and ‘resign’ to the horror of the human condition]. That’s the heroic path: we accepted the battle, we corrupted our soul, and we continued the fight until all of the understandings were there.

I know that everyone is fundamentally good at base. I sympathise with my kids and every human that’s lost touch with their child-self, because we had to, and that includes my own children; I had to realise that they’ve gone through a process of Resignation that was largely because of my behaviour. So my compassion for them and for all children today is beyond anything that was possible pre-understanding.

So as a dad and a husband: my wife and I, like all couples, we fight, we love each other. We’ve been married 27 years, but we fight because we don’t understand each other. Men and women are different, and we got told that—but we never got told why or how or what it means. And Jeremy explains it; he explains so succinctly the different strategies we had to adopt as men and women to deal with the human condition. So I have compassion for my wife, I understand her journey, both on an individual and at a gender level. And she can understand me, which is just fantastic! [The difference between men and women is explained in Freedom Essay 26: Men and women reconciled.]

This information will completely liberate everybody and free you of all of the uncertainty. And it’s not describable—our vocabulary unfortunately hasn’t caught up with the excitement that this information brings. The words aren’t there. This is just Jeremy joining the dots—biological first principle based explanation of the human condition. Very, very simple—a reconciliation of all the fossil and anthropological evidence, the biology, the science, the religion. Jeremy’s researched and connected all the pieces of the jigsaw together and it makes perfect sense.

Jeremy’s explanations are more meaningful than any brain can possibly imagine. I mean what more meaningful life can anybody hope for than to be able to share these understandings, to share this explanation—well, to at least engage in discussions about them—to help people open up their mind and to give them the knowledge about how heroic we are as a species. We actually now have a pathway…I won’t use the word redemption…but a pathway to healing! It’s the greatest pathway, the greatest gift anybody could have given us. Freedom’s the greatest word—freedom.