Section 3:10 Doug Lobban (recorded September 2010)

My name is Doug Lobban, I’m 32 years old [at the time of filming] and would like to talk to you today about my journey with the information that Jeremy Griffith has put forward because using this explanation of the human condition to understand the world around me and myself has had the most profound effect on my life I could ever have imagined. [Read the explanation of the human condition in Video/​F. Essay 3.]

I had a very typical upbringing, I grew up on a property in country New South Wales in Australia and then I worked in the rural industry after leaving school. I was introduced to this explanation through a friend, Will Salter, about 10 years ago and became a founding member of the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT (WTM) about four years ago and moved to Sydney to more directly support it shortly after that. My testament to the truth and power of this explanation of the human condition is also as much a testament to all the other Transformed Lifeforces you will see on this website and that what they are saying is true and is real and is available for all humans that have read and understood this explanation. Listen carefully to where Jeremy talks about the transformation that takes place through this explanation [see chapter 9 of FREEDOM, and F. Essays 15, 33, 36, 57 & 58] and also to what the Transformed Lifeforces have to say [you can view other Transformation Affirmations HERE] because it is through that explanation and their experiences that you will find the key to living with this all-confronting but dignifying and defending truth about ourselves.

Humans are without a doubt the most destructive force on this planet. We are capable of the most severe atrocities to ourselves, other people, animals, our environment and the world we live in. Even in Australia, the luckiest country in the world there are epidemic levels of suicide, depression, murder, rape, child abuse and violence on so many levels, and it is all increasing. Humans as a species have become extremely angry, egocentric and alienated and this upset is spiralling more and more out of control with each generation [see F. Essay 55: Endgame for the human race]. However, we also know and have seen that humans have an incredible capacity for love, kindness and selflessness and can and have performed amazing acts of generosity and bravery for and towards each other. [See F. Essay 21 for the explanation of how humans developed our altruistic moral instincts.]

In truth, deep down we are all striving for and want peace, harmony and freedom and it’s through this explanation that this will be achieved. It is through this explanation that humans can be at peace within ourselves, harmonious with each other and our environment around us and experience the true freedom and all the relief and meaning and excitement that goes with that.

I’d like to talk to you about the transformation that I have seen take place in myself because it is in seeing this that I then understood how powerful this explanation is and it is through this process that the world’s problems can be fixed virtually overnight.

I wasn’t particularly searching for answers but when this explanation came along what really attracted me to it was that it was a first principle science based idea [again, see Video/​F. Essay 3 for the explanation of the human condition]. It is a simple rational explanation and therefore understanding of why we are the way we are. It is not something you have to put your faith in and hope that it is right. You can use this explanation to understand the world around you and yourself, testing its validity by putting the concepts into real life situations that we all experience on a daily basis. For me there was always a rational answer for everything and I was never going to accept some ridiculous theory, of which there are many out there, which could not be tried and tested in my own mind and experiences.

My life before knowing about this explanation was heading down a very typical road but once I knew about this information I started to see the human condition in the world around me and why everything was the way it was. That was a massive relief for me because before knowing this everything was so confusing. Nobody would talk about anything except the weather and other mindless chit chat. Everyone walks around denying that there are any problems and to be a man in the world you just had to knuckle down, get on with it and become toughened to everything life threw at you. [See F. Essay 30 for the explanation of how humans psychologically ‘resigned’ to a life of denial of the human condition.]

After understanding the explanation for a while the focus shifts and you start to see the human condition within yourself and it is at this point that you end up in the ‘Mexican Standoff’ with this explanation, which, as is explained by Jeremy in Section 2:1 of Freedom Expanded: Book 2 [see also Video/​F. Essay 33], is knowing the explanation of the human condition is true but finding it very difficult to accept the obsolescence of your old, habituated egocentric, escapist and defensive strategy that you adopted before coming across this explanation and that your resigned self will not accept any criticism. Even though the explanation actually dignifies and defends our resigned position it still sees it as a negative. I don’t want to talk too much more about what is known as the ‘Mexican Standoff’ in the WTM other than to say that if you find yourself in that position don’t worry, it gets a whole lot better and it will only be a matter of time before you’ll be able to see the true power and beauty of this explanation.

I’d now like to talk to you a bit more about how I moved from the ‘Mexican Standoff’ position to the transformed position.

Firstly, you have to understand that the information is true and you have to test it enough in your life, your own life experiences enough to see this. This process will become quicker in time so it’s not a problem.

The next part for me pieced together over a few days.

The first thing that I saw, or really bottomed out on I guess, was this bigger picture of where humanity is at and where we’ve been. Two million years is a long time to be suffering under the duress of the human condition and a friend of mine was talking about this one night, that it is just where humanity is at in its journey, which is just an extraordinary thing to bottom out on. It is the thing that I really latched onto—that it is no one’s fault, it’s just where humanity is at and it’s just what has been going on for 2 million years. So it’s no wonder everything is the way it is and if you can look at it in that light of our species’ journey it explains why humans are just on such an egocentric bender in so many different directions. Without understanding in that journey we were going to end up in the position that we’re in basically. And it’s no one’s fault, it’s just the journey humans have had to go on but thank God we’ve now got the truth and the explanation as to why it’s happened. [Chapter 8 of FREEDOM details the 2 million year journey humanity has been on to find understanding of the human condition.]

The next thing I saw was basically that within my own mind there are two ways that I can think.

This picture is really good at explaining that and it will come more into context here as I go on. One way to think is the rational, logical, truthful way that everyone now has access to. You can understand Jeremy Griffith’s explanation that he has put forward, you can understand who Jeremy is, you can understand why he and other unresigned thinkers could delve into the forbidden realm of the human condition and dig out the truth and I can understand to some extent why I am the way I am, and what shaped me and moulded me in to who I am now. [See F. Essay 39 for an explanation of unresigned thinkers.]

The second way to think is the resigned way, this way just totally rules the roost, it defies logic, it doesn’t want to listen, it throws its weight around, it’s manipulative, conniving, compromising—basically dishonest. It’ll do anything to get a win or prove that it’s good and not bad. It’s insatiable, it’s never satisfied, it just always wants something else. It’s massively ego-centric. It’ll get one win and then it’ll want another one, always on the lookout, it’ll never back down, it’ll just hold on to grievances forever, it is never going to accept that it’s resigned and it’ll always argue the toss and never be happy. For me my whole strategy was one of trying to look soulful, trying to be something I’m not. To admit that you’re resigned is the biggest blasphemy for your resigned brain. [Again, see F. Essay 30 for the explanation of Resignation.]

But once you can see those two ways of thinking, once I could see that then I was out of my resigned bubble. I was in this realm here [the second bubble in the diagram] where you’re looking back in and you’re seeing the framework that you’ve been living through and you’re seeing that nothing will ever change whilst you’re living through that framework. It’s at that point that you’re out of your bubble, you’re looking back in at it and you’re seeing it for what it is and seeing that it’s okay, seeing that it had to be that way, that you’re just another resigned human after 2 million years of the human condition. Once you’re in that position you’re no longer being owned by your resigned strategy/​view of the world as you are in the first position in the diagram, you’re in the second position.

You can also see that your resigned strategy is defended, you can see that it’s explained, you can see that it’s over, you don’t have to live through it anymore and you also see that you don’t have to face it down, you don’t have to confront all the human condition within yourself and you can just let it go, just like that. Just like in the third picture in the bubble diagram.

The best way I can describe it is I just moved on and my strategy didn’t come with me. It just stayed back there and from there everything just opens up, it is quite extraordinary how you just start living for something other than yourself and what you are living for fixes the world’s problems and everything just becomes amazing.

Humanity’s Situation: the Sunshine Highway to Freedom, the Abyss of Depression,
our Cave-like Dead Existence and the Spiralling Pit of Terminal Alienation

I love this picture because when I broke through into the Transformed State I had a real vision of coming out of a big swamp and coming into a beautiful meadow with green grass and everything is just so relieving. It’s exactly as Jeremy says, it’s like taking wet, heavy burdensome woollen jumpers off and the weight and everything just drips away from you and the relief is unbelievable, it really is amazing. I was thinking about that coming out of the swamp image and thought you know that’s so great, it’s just such a shithole back there, just keep going forward and then I thought ‘Oh, it’s just exactly like Jeremy’s drawings of coming out of the cave and it’s exactly like the macro picture Jeremy drew of Humanity’s Journey to Enlightenment. [Plato’s cave allegory is explained in Video/​F. Essay 11.]

So anyway, you end up on this bit of road on the right-hand side of the Abyss drawing (above) and you start trudging out of that cave-like dead existence and you keep walking forward and then you get on this bridge straight across the abyss and you end up out in the sunshine. It is extraordinary. Just the fact that you can be free of your own human condition and free of all that preoccupation. You’ve got no worries, no noises in your head, it’s just gone, you can just work away with nothing in the back of the mind nagging away, you can just do your work and be happy, singing, whistling away. This explanation and Transformed State is for everyone and there is no odd human out there that can’t access this, you’re not the one out of 6 billion that can’t access this, it is there for everyone. The beauty of that Abyss picture I was thinking the other day is that it’s got a bridge going over it, Jeremy didn’t draw a little ladder going down into the abyss so that you have to trudge through the depression at the bottom and climb all the way back up the other side. Instead he’s drawn this awesome bridge going straight across it! It doesn’t matter what strategy you’ve got either, you can be anything and just knowing that you don’t have to live out that strategy is so relieving. You can just bundle it all up into one big package and leave it behind and head across that bridge. It’s all explained and it’s all dealt with. All the pain and suffering in human life is now explained and understood. It’s dealt with and defended and understood. The information or the explanation does that and you can just be so free of it, it’s incredible.

And the excitement that flows from being free of all that, that is quite amazing. You can’t sleep, I mean I would go to bed thinking about this transformation process and I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would think of is the transformation process! I’d be waking up at 4.30am and just thinking for an hour or so and then jump out of bed at 5.30am and say to my partner ‘Pol, I’ve just got to get up and go to work I’m so excited!’. And the excitement is unrelenting, I don’t know whether it’s going to settle down. In the first week my poor old body wasn’t quite coping with all the excitement I am feeling, it couldn’t quite keep up with my brain and all the realisations I was having! The 180 degree switch your thinking takes is what really amazed me. You go from being confronted by the information and Jeremy and the explanation basically because your resigned self can’t deal with it, and also being confronted by the Transformed Lifeforces and the transformation process, to just not being able to stop thinking about it. Any spare moment your brain has got it will just click in because that’s all it wants to think about, that’s all it wants to promote and that’s all it wants to support. And all that ego and the need to prove yourself just goes and you can walk around free to do whatever you want to do. And the buzz you get after talking to someone about it or doing a talk about it is just incredible, it is amazing and that is one thing that I have found just so extraordinary, that switch in your brain from struggle and preoccupation to total freedom.

So through this process you can change from living your life through a competitive, egocentric, insecure, meaningless framework, to being able to live a happy and content- with-who-you-are, meaningful and incredibly exciting life.

I just thought I’d read out this little bit of writing. I wrote this late one night after lying awake for several hours being so excited trying to calm myself down but I couldn’t, it was about 11.30pm so I will just read it out now:

‘I am just so excited, I can’t sleep, I am about to burst. I was in the shower and a hook on the curtain had fallen off so I put it back on and got an amazing feeling of meaning and I got out of the shower and just looked around for something else I could fix because that is what we get to do now, fix the world, and I just can’t believe that after eons of generations we are the ones who actually get to participate in fixing the world up. It’s just unbelievable, there is so much to do I can’t wait to get into it.

Even though I know you did, especially Jeremy, I have this feeling of “You didn’t tell me it was this good”. I’m starting to feel selfish because all I can feel is how good it is that it is finally all over. We’re out of there. LET’S GO.

I got this image of marching straight forward with incredible purpose straight out of a massive swamp into long green grass with flowers and butterflies and sunshine and never ever looking back just keep marching forward. Everyone together, we are going to have so much fun.’