Daniel M. Ingram:
A person who claimed that they were free of feelings and later recounted this has told me that the person I mention in the video has recounted her claim, but this is hearsay, so who knows? I haven't gotten in touch with her to verify this.
I think it is Stefanie you are talking about in the video and I did message her about this and this is what she has to say:
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Hi,
My account at the DhO is no longer accessible to me (I don't remember the password). So I'll write a message here, which I authorize you to re-post in the thread on my behalf, if you don't mind.
I am not sure who all the unnamed people are in Daniel's post are; so I can't report on any of the hearsay there. But I'll give you this information about myself, and my experiences, directly.
Firstly, let me cut to the chase: I absolutely retract any claim whatsoever to being 100% free of affect. I probably exist in the state that in actualism is known as "Virtual Freedom." I am entirely happy and harmless 99% of the time, but there are moments when emotions arise.
I can also say, without a doubt, that I do still experience "vibrations," and can "read/sense" the vibrations of others quite acutely. Mostly it doesn't bother me one bit--in fact, I find it quite difficult to "tell" the difference between "my" vibrations and the vibrations of "others."
About two years ago, I was asked to participate in a mediation study at Yale along with some other DhOers. It was discovered, in the course of that study, that I had (have) a brain tumor. I took this news with absolute calm and have generally not been in the least "freaked out" by it. I think those who were present when the news wwas broken, who who read and sometimes participate on this forum, can certainly attest to that.
In general, this is my mode of being; but interpersonal matters have produced within me affective reactions--undoubtedly.
If you would like my pure and unadulterated opinion about the entire thing--the collection of AF folks here, all of whom I've come to know incredibly well or did at one time, I will give it (a rarity on these fora). In my opinion, none of the people I interacted with were either free of "beliefs" or affect. There seemed to be an abundance of beliefs which ranged from the truly absurd (such as, perhaps my brown skin could 'rub off' upon one--which is just racist, and racism is simply a culturally inherited belief system) to the more sophisticated (such as, one should travel and be rootless without a job to experience greater liberation--perhaps some of us agree with this, but it is a belief, an idea, nonetheless).
By and by, it was also suggested to me that I pay someone $200 a month to teach me how to teach others Buddhism so I could be a better help and money was requested from me on other occasions, to invest and so on; which could have been utterly innocent but given these contexts also utterly improper.
After my many experiences with people who supposedly shared the same state of being as myself, I decided to 1) get out of the business of making claims, 2) refuse to let anyone position themselves as a teacher or quasi-guru in my own practice and path, and 3) stop participating in online fora where everything is essentially a rhetorical performance which bears only a small resemblance to what is going on in the actual world.
Furthermore, it became clear that any criticism of certain posters on the DhO would be met with a jargonistic close reading which would render the person's original intent and meaning utterly moot and if the person dared persist, he or she might find him or her self banned for the forum. So though I was urged, at one point, to post "the truth," by someone close to another AF claimant, I refrained from doing so.
I share all of this to say that the less one is invested in any cult of personality, the better. The more one is mindfully applied to his or her own daily experience, the better. This is what I try to do if I have a "practice," (which I do not) at all. It is simply to be here, right now. I do not read the DhO. I do not subscribe to the Actualism Yahoo list. I only continue to regularly to talk to one AF claimant, who, as far as I know, has not retracted his claim (nor do I see him doing so).
So, that, in a nutshell, is an update as well as, I'm sure, enough information to keep this thread active a long time. I only attempted to the speak the truth in the hope that if any of you are reading this forum and thinking you want to be like "X," poster, and thinking that "X" poster can give you the "golden ticket" to obliterate your suffering--think again. You are "X" poster...and your teaching is waiting for you out there.
Best,
Stefanie
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