Mike - I appreciate your clarity and hope to emulate it. Your comments are re-copied in quote boxes below.
... I must add that I still do not understand a few aspects of your second reply. What I do not understand is as follows:
1) Stanzas 28 and 29 are addressing the liberation of the individual practicing, but my question instead is where and how the other individuals in your life fit in after that liberation.
I cannot answer accurately, because I am not liberated of my self.
If i become liberated, however, it will be because of "others": i will have otherized, and i will have ended otherization by ending that which can otherize - self (which is not to say all things are "one").
I would think a disenchanted person is not swept up in their own narrative, can better observe the narratives of others (such as another individual's being threatened by your liberation), and take reasonable actions not to deliberately provoke such person, or even just take leave of them. (A friend in an orthodox tradition wrote me this yesterday:
Even Jesus said to not only leave the homes of those who do not embrace you, but to wipe the dust of their home off your feet. )
Analogy:
If you are a wild animal obliged to be in captivity, which tamer do you want to come to you?
The tamer that has no enchanted beliefs about you or themselves and will let you exhaust yourself, attending your condition with a clear mind (i.e., one free of its own manipulative interest in you)?
Or,
do you want a tamer who has quite a lot going on in their head, provoking lots of narratives/spell-bound stories (relating perhaps to you, perhaps their ideas of you/themselves) and ultimately seeking to train you for what they want/need at any given moment?
*
Those who are not yet liberated may easily misperceive his freedom as strange or threatening, because they do not understand the quality of his being.
And?
*
I cannot entirely imagine how it would be to function without enchantment or attachment, since I am yet bound by enchantment and attachment.
What is the difference between their misperception and your enchantment?
*
Yes, the liberated being is liberated, and so he has lived the holy life and in doing so he understands by its completion that there is nothing more to be done, and that there is no more coming to any state of being.
(i bolded your words to call attention to how you may be reading this excerpt of MN22).
I read this MN22 excerpt as saying that the efforts of a holy life and any other enchantments finally have been lived. After these are done (exhausted), then there is no more coming into being.
Through dispassion [his mind] is liberated.
When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: 'It is liberated.'
He understands:
'Birth is destroyed,
the holy life has been lived,
what had to be done has been done,
there is no more coming to any state of being.This reading would also respond to your doubts: that those doubts are occurring, thus these doubts must occur until they are done, and then there is no more coming to any state of being:
2) I am affected by doubt, but I don't understand what you mean by "how to". If you mean that I perhaps have doubt in the quality or efficacy of my practice at this point in time, then you are correct. I have doubts which I observe arising about both of those things, I have doubts that I am not as far along on the path as I would like to be, and I have doubts that I will manage to make progress along the path of insight, and I have doubts that I will manage to realize liberation in this very life.
*
It seems to me that our uncovered state is inherent (which someone usefully emailed me, calling it a "birthright").
But if we're doing "it" (questing/meditating/loving/co-suffering/self-suffering/fearing/enchanting/attaching,etc), then "it" must be so until we stop doing "it", and there is no more coming into being.
What are your thoughts?
[edits: complete revision]