An Eternal Now:
As Thusness have said before, there is no doubt about the relationship between affective feelings and identity/attachment to self. (Identity being the cause of feelings, without the cause there can be no effect)
whereas it is actually the instinctual passions that constitute the identity (without which passions there is no fear, malice, or sorrow, let alone anyone to feel them).
An Eternal Now:
Even though feelings are directly related to attachment of Self/self, there are different degrees of attachment to self/Self. And these attachments can only be removed via insight.
as an actual freedom is not the removal of attachment to self/Self via insight (or any other means) but rather is the elimination of (the cause of) that self/Self itself, you are here only parading your nescience of the condition (and the means that produce it) once more.
An Eternal Now:
For if the fundamental belief in an inherently existing self in its various forms are not removed via insight into the absence of such an inherently existing self, no amount of PCEs or temporary abeyance of 'self' is going to last. And also, having PCEs does not mean having an insight into the absence of an inherent self, as Richard have said, everyone has a PCE in his life. (yet only few have achieved actual freedom, and not even many have realized the significance of a pce) What's the use of a PCE if deep in his mind he still clings to his own belief/view of an existing being?
firstly, as it is clearly stated in the actualist writings that it is 'i' (as 'my feelings'), and not a pce, that is the key to an actual freedom, then it is equally clear that any argument you may put forth to argue against the view that a pce either can be made permanent or itself cause an actual freedom is a straw man argument of your own invention with no relevance to what is actually stated, as what you are arguing against has not been said at all.
secondly, as it is a pce that enables in the first place an experiential understanding of the possibility of living happily and harmlessly, void of malice and sorrow, then a pce is entirely necessary for working toward such a condition. further, as it is only the recollection/induction of a pce that can directly orient one towards what is actual, then the use of a pce lies in one's use of it to produce, here and now, a condition where one is actually living happily and harmoniously, void of malice and sorrow. to make this a matter of belief (of whether or not ' still clings to [one's] own belief/view of an existing being') is to miss the point of the actualism method entirely.
thirdly, as it is how an identity relates to the memory of a pce (which matter is entirely up to the identity) that determines how 'i' feel about the prospect of 'my' extinction, and as it is how 'i' feel about the prospect of 'my' extinction that determines whether or not that extinction is enabled to occur, then what enables such extinction to occur is the unconditional willingness to abandon passional existence entirely ... which willingness is engendered by having experienced such passional absence and having understood the utter, and unique, safety that extinction actually is (and not by the removal of any 'belief in' - or 'attachment to' - 'an inherently existing self').
that you have not understood the first point (that the pce alone has never been said to cause an actual freedom - however obviously it has been written) is understandable, as indulging this misunderstanding does conveniently present you the opportunity to segue into an advertisement of your belief that feelings, being related to attachment of Self/self, can only be removed via insight into such attachment (and that insight into such attachment is what supposedly produces an actual freedom).
that you have not understood the second point (about what the use of a pce is in the actualism method) is understandable, as, in taking a method simply intended to eradicate malice and sorrow and turning it into a fantasy of transcendental realisation attainment (which i have pointed out that you do, elsewhere in this reply, in my previous reply, and in our past correspondence), you are bound to miss the point of it entirely.
that you have not understood the third point (about what enables an actual freedom to occur) is understandable, as its comprehension would require you to have an experiential understanding of how 'i' am 'my feelings' and 'my feelings' are 'me' ... an understanding you evidently both do not possess and yet think that you do.
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An Eternal Now:
Not only is insight important, there are many various insights necessary to deconstruct the many disguises of 'Self'. The deconstruction of personality can for example, still result in an attachment to a big Self. Yet even the deconstruction of that Big Self, leaving only the actual world as it is without a self or a Self, can become another subtle object of grasping - the grasping into a subtle inherent ground, though no longer a self/Self, still manifests as a 'inherently existing Here/Now' which we must constantly ground ourselves in or return to.
as, in an actual freedom, there is no "'inherently existing Here/Now' which 'we must constantly ground ourselves in or return to', then your claim that 'even the deconstruction of that Big Self, leaving only the actual world as it is without a self or a Self, can become another subtle object of grasping' only further demonstrates your misunderstanding (and thus misrepresentation) of what is meant by the absence of a 'feeling being' (or 'self/Self') in the actualist writings .... as well as what is meant by the actual world.
to be clear, any 'inherently existing Here/Now' to which you find you must constantly grasp in order to 'ground in or return to' is nothing other than that 'Big Self', however deconstructed it has become, in another guise ... which is not surprising, as deconstruction is in no way the same thing as eliminination[1], and so the deconstruction of any form that instinctual passions take (whatever the form, or name it is given) is in no way the same thing as the elimination of those passions themselves.
An Eternal Now:
Therefore further insight of the disjoint, unsupported, freeing, and non-inherency of phenomena must arise to complement the initial insight of anatta, and the insight of non-dual. Beyond that, there are further insights into the emptiness of objects. Therefore, there are various subtle views/framework of duality and inherency obscuring true effortless and liberating experience.
as it is the elimination of those passions themselves - thereby bringing to a resolute end the experience of being or feeling - which constitutes an actual freedom, then what your rejoinder amply demonstrates is that what you mean by stage 5 of your enlightenment model (whereat this 'Big Self' is deconstructed) has nothing to do with what an actual freedom from the human condition (where identity is eliminated in its entirety) is ... and nor has any other stage along the instinctual passion-ignoring quest for insight that said model maps.
it follows, then, that an experience of the actual world is one wherein there is no such grasping or grounding or returning whatsoever, as therein are no passions to fuel the imaginative fantasy in which context grasping or grounding in or returning to (about which you are concerned) occurs ... irrespective of your ill-informed attempt to portray the matter otherwise.
An Eternal Now:
Hence, a fundamental shift of view via insight (and there are various degrees and subtleties) is necessary - otherwise there cannot be true effortless, seamless, and liberating experience. Subtle traces of self will remain and often unnoticed.
A simple example for a person at the I AM phase (but this also applies to any person in any phases): a person at the I AM phase, though having glimpses of PCE, will never be stable in it because of his current view of duality and inherency causes him to keep perceiving duality and sinking back into a background Source. However he sees PCE as a progression and cultivates the experience, yet can never achieve effortlessness with his current paradigm/view. But, after the insight of Anatta, it is seen that 'seeing is just the seen, awareness is just a label for the various sensate perceptions, there is no perceiver' - it all becomes effortless and he no longer needs to cultivate an experience, for experience are all already implicitly so - he no longer tries to maintain a state where no division occurs between seer and seen - for already there never was a seer/awareness/seeing apart from what is seen, to begin with.
hmm... and in same fashion, already there never was a feeler/awareness/(affective) feeling apart from what is (affectively) felt, to begin with, eh?
then again, there is also an actual freedom from the human condition whereby all such feelings (and feeler formed thereof) come to a total end (and are not merely found to lack a division between them) ... which is another matter entirely.
An Eternal Now:
I do not deny that for example... in certain modes of experiencing, such as a PCE, one is free from affective feelings.
in a pce, one is indeed temporarily free of affect/feeling, which process is in abeyance.
An Eternal Now:
Yet, to me that is like saying 'in a state of calmness, one is freed from affective feelings' - it does not imply that latent tendencies are removed (which you disagree).
as i have in no way ever thought - much less written - that the potential for feelings is removed by the experience of a pce, it would interest me if you would point out where i have said as much (from which you have concluded that i have or would disagree(d) with an assessment that a pce does not remove the potential for feelings).
An Eternal Now:
Even if (and is often the case of those who claim freedom from affective feelings) one has a very stabilized experience and thus it does seem that one has become freed from affective feelings, does not mean that all the latent tendencies of self has been removed.
assuming that what you mean by 'latent tendencies of self' here basically amounts to the potential for experiencing affect: as you have thus far failed to grasp that it is instinctual passion which is at the root of being, your implicit assertion here that what constitutes an actual freedom from the human condition (and thus from affect entirely) must contain latent tendencies of affect is meaningless (not to mention, evidently unsubstantiated).
An Eternal Now:
There is thus a need for further insights and let these insight sink in to remove all the traces of grasping and self/Self. To me and Thusness, there is often this tendency to overclaim which we are seeing in many places (from those who realized anatta, from those who realized non dual, even those who realized I AM - all kinds of people have claimed freedom from affective feelings)... (...)
i would be interested to know of any people you and thusness know or know of, other than those who are actually free, who claim to not ever experience, inter alia, irritation, agitation, frustration, melancholy, sadness, gloom, craving, greed, libido, disquietude, uneasiness, nervousness, nervous tension, or apprehension.
relatedly, i would also still be interested to know - as i asked you about directly in our correspondence from last august (in a question you overlooked/ignored) - if you or thusness would still require me to be nailed to a cross to find out if i'm really free of affect, as one of your emails suggested.
An Eternal Now:
(...) and because we had certain basic disagreements, I thought it was best that I just left it there and hence, did not reply to your emails.
as what i essentially disagreed with you about, in my reply to your final email (both dated 14 august 2010), was the entire argument you used to underlie your distortion of the definition of an actual freedom in order to fit it into your comparitivist-syncretist-apologist framework of enlightenment (such that an 'actual freedom', placed within that framework, is defined as being brought about by 'prajna wisdom' and not by 'removing all the desires and passions'), i was not surprised to not receive a reply[2].
it is needless to say that i will not be party to such a distortion or watering-down of the meaning of an actual freedom as you evidently intend.
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An Eternal Now:
When I mentioned 'I am my feelings' in the past, Thusness has (though never mentioned elsewhere) told me not to look at it this way, as this is what Buddhism sees as the 'view of inherency' analogous to saying that this moment of thought is the same as the previous moment of thought and a mango seedis the same as the fruit. From the 'view' and practice perspective, a practitioner should take note of this. 'i am my feelings' shows the insight of no-split - there is no separate, independent, self apart from feelings, but it is still seeing it from an inherent perspective.
whereas in the context of actualism (the practice that leads to an actual freedom, as distinct from what thusness teaches), what is meant by 'i am my feelings, and my feelings are me' is that the very sense of 'me' is part and parcel of any feeling, no matter how flickering, or brief, or self-liberating that feeling is, and that any feeling, no matter how flickering, or brief, or self-liberating, indicates 'me' as an identity ... no matter how many people may misunderstand/misrepresent its meaning to support whatever philosophical position they champion, and in however many ways.
An Eternal Now:
I see it this way: There is only feelings, no feeler. Identity is the cause of feelings, identity not being feeling, and feeling not being identity, but they are inseparably interconnected - without identity, there can be no feelings. Not because I do not see 'no split' but because there must be clarity in view so that we do not fall in the error of saying a mango seed is the same as the fruit, or a previous moment of thought is this current moment of thought. A subtle inherent view is still present if it is not clearly seen. I see each phenomenon as disjoint, unsupported, complete in itself, though interconnected - like Dogen puts it,
Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.
as what you are here doing is declaring the inadequacy of a philosophical perspective ('view of inherency') that you have mistakenly assumed to be implied in a phrase you do not understand ('i am my feelings') and endeavouring to point out, in so many words (plus ancient quotation), a common-sense fact dressed-up as a spiritual insight (that any phenomenon, though intrinsically related to other (related) phenomena, is simply what it is) in order to use it as support for a philosophical belief, then this whole section of your reply is a non-sequitur, as you are clearly only talking to yourself.
at the end of the day, it is your life, and you are welcome to see each phenomenon as disjoint, unsupported, complete in itself, though interconnected, or however else you may wish to, and whatever you may wish to believe any of those things to imply, and i have no (and never have had any) problem with any of that whatsoever. to the extent, however, that you bring those beliefs to bear authoritatively on a discussion forum set up specifically to facilitate the practice of actualism (a method you evidently do not understand) and produce an actual freedom (which condition you have no experience of) in such a way that may mislead sincere practitioners, then to that extent, you can expect me to intervene and call a spade a spade ... for in not setting straight here on this forum what matters that you twist, i would be implicitly supporting the disservice you currently do its participants by heedlessly muddying the waters concerning what the actualism method and an actual freedom are and are not.
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An Eternal Now:
tarin greco:
[5] from the comments on http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/09/actual-freedom-third-alternative.html:
(an eternal now):
I also had an interesting chat with Tarin, though he neither refuted nor gave any conclusions about my document [attempting to equate buddhism and actual freedom] so far. But he should be writing a response soon.
(...)
I have not heard any refutation so far by them on how Stage 5 is not PCE/AF-related.
(...)
I have not heard from others (Tarin or Daniel) of anything implying that Stage 5 is unrelated to PCE or AF.
[6] if there is any insight crucial to becoming actually free at all, it might be the one mentioned in footnote 4: 'i am my feelings and my feelings are me'.
Those comments were made prior to further discussions or at least the points were not being made explicitly clear then (if I am not wrong you only said you will write a response but you have not written the response then), therefore my comments were true at that point in time.
if you go back and check your chat record (dated before you wrote the above comments we're here discussing three and six days), you will find that i pointed out how stage 5 (and the rest of the model) is unrelated to af in very explicitly clear terms. as for my writing a response, my replies in our ensuing email correspondence sufficed for that purpose.
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in closing, here is something to personally consider (apart from considerations about what effects your actions may have on others):
consider that you do not have clue one about what an actual freedom is, and that you do not at this time even
want to have clue one about it, as an actual freedom is not what you actually want. then do yourself a favour and go get as enlightened as you possibly can, realising all the profound realisations that you possibly can, as clearly this is what you want. later, if you should develop an immediate interest in living entirely free of malice and sorrow (which you, in our private correspondence, have dismissed as 'just moral conduct'), then - and only then - return to the actualism method, as you will have developed a necessary condition prerequisite to the fulfillment of its practice. simply put, there is no point in your concerning yourself with it now, as without this proper intent (whereby a life entirely free of malice and sorrow is your immediate concern), you will only continue to confuse yourself about what the method leading to such freedom actually entails.
tarin
[1] compare:
de·con·struct
To break down into components; dismantle.
e·lim·i·nate
To get rid of; remove
[2] particularly as, in that reply, i also: (a) denied the existence of moments of consciousness which you, owing to your belief in rebirth, believe continues to arise after the physical body dies; (b) pointed out that i am not a buddhist; and (c) pointed out that in any case the buddha depicted in the pali canon presented the eradication of defilements as being the very point of the practice he propagated (and not as merely the side-effect of a realisation practice which you stated your teacher believes such eradication to be).