1) I am pleased to answer your queries, as they show your genuine and brimming anguish for freedom.
I ask because in July last year, 'being' dropped away in the ongoing experience. I had a couple more shifts later on yet I have experienced (a since greatly diminished) array of residual phenomena that you seem to be talking about in your own experience. It is interesting to note that in all my conversations and readings of trent, jill, and tarin, who have had their 'attainments' of 'actually free' questioned by Richard himself, that they never talked of such 'residual' phenomena lasting more than a month post 1st 'AF' shift. I have had it since July, with certain phenomena ceasing for good since then.
2) Many things are bound to contradict with what had been sold as 'actually free'. Same freedom will be experienced uniquely by each person. Buddhas of yore, and even Richard has not spoken over it yet. But I dare to speak on it. Enjoy freedom as it comes to you. As Andrew Jones recently wrote for Ed C. take a pliable course and results are sure to come.
I see. It is interesting to see different personalties and different conditioning still supposedly operating in those who profess to being 'actually free'.
3) Becoming jittery belongs to our 50,000 years of neuronal conditioning. It is not fear. These are not eradicated in AF, (at least for me). I wrote I am not a macho.
I have called this 'shadow being' in my own experience.
4) 'Going mad', is an apparent event, which is inevitable too. Getting balanced into your poise of freedom is REAL AF. If you squeal, break mirrors, throw glasses, gnash your teeth (I did all these things when I was a spiritual giant -a giant indeed- when I was not actually free, and now I don't do them), that means you are still under the grip of instinctual passions. We can do something easy Nick, and AF is so simple.
So you are not at 'REAL AF'? What was the phenomenological experience of 'going mad'? Is it simply a sensation in a localised area of the body? The chest for example? I'd call this 'shadow being' in my own experiecne.
5) Thoughts certainly affect us. It is an energy. Won't you get a mild electric shock if you touch an earthing plug? We are surrounded by a criss-cross of 'thought field' that is flooding us all every minute, day and night. Don't imagine actually free means you start living in a world of 'lotus eating heaven'. The actual freedom experience is million times powerful than anything 'unpleasant', but if someone artfully breaks wind (farts) straight on your nostril knowingly or unknowingly, you will hold your nose and feel chagrin for a minute. An actually free person has more chagrins than normal people each day.
"lotus eating heaven' sounds like the locked in paradise tarin talked of, and the azul and verdant paradise Richard talks of. Interesting to see you have quite a different view.
cha·grin (sh-grn)
n.
A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event: To her chagrin, the party ended just as she arrived.
So you feel chagrins? How does this manifest phenomenologically? More localised sensations and no mental movement? Or some sort of mental movement unrecognized as 'affect' or manifesting as 'being'?
6) Don't take things literally, Nick. We should grow. Life is full of unnerving things. That's why Richard demands nerves of steel to be actually free. Still one may go nervous. But they won't have power to rule you. That's all the present earth can permit.
Just yesterday the town Trichy where I am sitting now, shook terribly with earth quake. Everyone ran out to the street, including me. Don't dream too much. 'Free of affect' means, you are not a slave to it.
How do you experience these nervousness? Physical sensations only? A slight mental movement? Free of affect means you are not a slave to it means affect still arises yet, it does not 'stick'? Or it does not sway the mind? So affect is still present to some degree?
7) Yes. My stomach churns with emotions some times. If I happen to see a nasty vomit on my bike seat, or a blood-curdling scene of an accident, where I see a headless body twitches in a pool of blood, won't my normalcy be affected? Psychically there are more horrible things one may encounter even after becoming actually free. Why I wrote Richard wears invisible blinkers? He saves energy that way. The fact is these things don't rule you. But we have to shiver for a while with certain things Nick - because we are still human beings made up of flesh and blood, balanced by the neuronal activities of our mysterious thing called brain - and we are not made up of nuts, bolts and screws.
So there is still residual affect felt as sensations experienced physically. Shadow being indeed. Even after a couple of years. Interesting. You are presenting quite a different picture of 'actually free' than those who have in the past.
Interesting times.
Thanks for your honesty, Justine. Much appreciated. Much of what seems to go on out of public view (and sometimes in it) seems motivated more for political reasons, maintaining the status quo, keeping authority localized, keeping 'things' in control and 'pure', maintaining status as this originator or that founder.
The more people talk openly and honestly free of such political maneuvering, about what is possible for all humans and the manifold ways that they can go about changing their brains for good, the more people will have access to such freedom, not the other way around. The more one holds on to one's dogmatic context for practice and selling of such a practice, the more it keeps others who object to such dogmatic contexts at bay. The more variety of contexts for the practice of 'apperception' or 'pre-symbolic awareness', the more people will have their means to freedom.
Wouldn't you say?
Nick
