Is "allowing any connections" the same as disabling the firewall? [SOLVED]

[Seanny]

To elaborate on the title:
I have two rules on my firewall which is set up a transparent bridge. In other words, my WAN and LAN interface are part of a single bridge. The only rule that I have applied is to allow traffic from any interface to any interface and to not keep the state of the connection (state type is set to "none).

When the firewall is enabled, the pings and the replies to pings of my host on the LAN interface get blocked before they can reach their destination on the WAN interface. Theses dropped pings are not logged.

Now for some reason, when I disable the firewall (specifically, I use the command "pfctl -d"), I'm able to ping again.

What is the difference between the rules I have applied and disabling the firewall? Is there any way to use pfSense as a simple IP address filter? Is the a way to configure pfSense to be a stateless firewall (this has been asked many times, but each time the OP is convinced to not do it)?

Thank you for you time,
Seanny

EDIT Answered my own question and solved my own problem. Will post details later when I'm not at work.