| | Nick asks:
"Stephanie, could you elaborate on how to get AF, you realized "that the twinge of anxiety was not a problem, it was just a veil, like a bell jar, and one needed to just yank the veil off, as the world is totally perfect."
How did you "yank the veil off" exactly? I think i understand what you mean. I have recently seen how there is a choice in any given moment to experience with an affective filter or without. Could you elaborate on it?"
Practicing the PCE, and developing such a faculty with them that I was in them almost all day every day, meant that when one was not in the PCE there was something like a "switch" one could flip to go back into one. If existence when not in a PCE is "A," and the PCE is "B," then movement between A and B makes the path to "C" (actual freedom) more apparent; this is why the gold standard advice is "stay as close to the PCE as possible," because in doing so, one moves ever closer to actual freedom. I will attempt what is an antiquated analogy in the era of CDs and Ipods; but think of a wax record. They are heated and therefore during their creation phase very soft; an object then imprints a groove onto the wax, and from that groove comes a particular sound. The PCE, the practicing of apperception, has the effect of reheating the wax so that all those grooves melt away. We might understand those grooves to be the social identity as well as the instinctual passions, so that practicing HAIETMOBA, which leads to apperception, which is the PCE, begins to unravel the self/Self.
The analogy of the veil, or the bell jar (a term which alludes to Sylvia Plath's novel by the same name), suggests that the self that needs to be undone has no actuality at all; the realization is that this parasitic thing one might perceive themselves to be "battling" with is pure fiction, therefore, getting rid of it is not at all a transformation of the actual matter (that being your flesh and blood body) but rather a radical, but ultimately simple, mutation in consciousness that enables the recognition that one has always been here in the actual world.
None of this should hurt.
For many, many years, I must admit, "Stefanie" had this strange suspicion when she was particularly stressed out, that there was some kind of way to "let go." Stefanie could suss out, in some inexplicable way, some boundary to the anxiety/tension/fear/worry and there was a very faint, vague realization that beyond that boundary there was no negative experience, but Stefanie couldn't find the tipping point until coming upon the DhO, Daniel and Tarin's conversations, and the Actual Freedom website. What I realize now is that the letting go was held back only by a belief that holding onto the tension was necessary to be a good person, to contain crisis and trauma, to "be on top of things." The belief went something like..."If I don't worry about X, Y, and Z, I will not accomplish W, which I really really need to accomplish to survive. So I better keep worrying until I get this thing accomplished. And I must accomplish this thing, otherwise, I will be letting down my family, those who depend on me, and I'll be a failure." Even as a Goenka meditator, for many years, this kind of anxious thought process was at work. This way of thinking, these beliefs, caused "Stefanie" untold suffering and sometimes that suffering was "mild," other times it could be excruciatingly intense; it was in those moments of intensity that this vague call to release this mechanism, whatever it was, would reveal itself.
This letting go is releasing one's self in order to experience harmlessness and happiness, instead of thinking it is a frivolous and useless enterprise to cultivate felicity, joie de vivre, carefreelessness, naivete, and humor. To be innocent and sincere is to be unassailable in one's happiness.
As I write this I am reminded of an incident from my childhood. I was about 10 at the time. I was walking home from school with my best friend and was probably in a PCE, as we'd just come from ballet, and physical activity was a childhood trigger for 'Stefanie' to experience a PCE...and a man pulled up alongside us on the street and asked directions. He asked if we knew how to get to "nipple street." I was thinking quite hard about how to give the man good advice, because I knew, as I lived in Denver, that all the streets were alphabetical, and that we were currently on Birch street, so I only needed to figure out which direction would send him deeper into the alphabet towards "N," and this is what I was thinking, quite benignly trying to help the man. My friend was grabbing at my arm frantically and I was standing there, sort of looking up as people do when thinking hard, and didn't notice the man was masturbating. I finally told him I had no idea where Nipple street was, but good luck. He drove off. My friend then told me the man was masturbating and her freak out commenced.
In my sincerity and naivete, I was completely incapable of being harmed by his attempt (which failed in my case) to expose himself to me and my friend. The release mechanism is to cultivate so much sincerity and naivete that one is so happy, that while one has feelings one is feeling good, *no matter what. *
One must be willing to be what some might understand as foolish; in the absence of a cunning entity, in the absence of manipulation, strategizing, and so on, one releases one's self into happiness, into feeling good, into experiencing the perfection of the world as it is, rather than categorizing, judging objects, people, and incidents as either good, bad, or neutral and then reacting to objects, people, and incidents as +1 or -1, or 0. In the case of the man looking for nipple street, one perspective on that event is that I was a total idiot who failed to realize the salacious nature of his intent. But what would that realization have gained me, but suffering and unhappiness, had I understood the incident the way my friend did, rather than as a simple (though insincere on his part) request for directions?
To the question you asked, Nick, of "how" to yank off the veil I have attempted to answer by saying, to summarize these comments, that going in and out of the PCE delineates the boundaries of the parasitic identity and enables one to suss out the delusional nature of it; being as happy as one possibly can to the point of ultimate naivete and sincerity; and by having fun and refusing to be serious. Therefore, when one is not in a PCE and "I" makes an appearance in the form of feelings (since "I" am my feelings and my feelings are "me,") one can flip the switch because one has seen through the gauzy fictitiousness of that identity and one is having so much fun in the actual world, why let a delusion crash the party? |