Actual Freedom – General Correspondence

I’ve just realized this will be too long and ‘dense’ a mail. May there be too much information just for one mail. Maybe I am a little excited ... Tell me if you want to answer just parts of it, leaving to the future another parts. As you’ve read, I’d like to ask you some questions. Although I may make them too detailed, you can answer me the way you think is best. Some brief considerations may be in order before them: (snip personal details) Reading the part of the method (or at least technique) suggested in your writings, I remembered a couple of things:

– Part of the very basic and essential logosophical method: though simplifying, Logosophy maintains that man is constituted by three systems: the mental, the sensitive and the instinctive systems. Within the mental system reside the thoughts. The basic exercise, ‘to see’ a thought acting in our mind, consists in observing how I am feeling. For example, a disturbing feeling growing inside us at the moment of hearing someone’s opinion about any matter, could be revealing us a thought of intolerance taking possession of our mind (in Logosophy, the commonly called ‘negative’ feelings are considering thoughts. Intolerance, envy, greed, vanity, impatience, etc. would be then all thoughts). The observing of our feelings can become more or less automatic with practice.

– In True Buddhism one of the two rituals that must be practiced is a kind of mantram, called daymoku which consist in the constant repetition of a phrase. While the phrase is being said, one has to meditate about the problems one has or anything of vital interest. Although is a bit difficult at the beginning, with some practice the repetition become automatic and the mind slowly starts to get free of thinking about one wants. One of the goals of that mantram (in my words) is to control the state of the mind, slowing down it, preventing the ‘moving’ of undesirable thoughts and allowing the mind to think much more deeply and clearly.

So:

1) Although I’ve already started the practice, I’m having doubts about if I’m doing it right. You say: ‘‘I’ asked myself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?’. My first question is: what exactly does ‘each moment’ means? How often this phrase has to be said?. Must it be said constantly, like a mantram, connecting the ‘alive’s final ‘e’ with the ‘How’s ‘H’ over and over again, in circles?.

2) The logosophical observing of one’s feelings is, in the first place, a way of getting back the attention to oneself. It is a technique to regain the conscience on oneself. But at that moment one of two things takes place (at least as far as I was be able to observe): the thought vanishes or loses power by the mere fact of watching it or one must apply another thought (tolerance, modesty, patience, etc.) to debilitate it more (this last procedure seems to have points of contact with your ‘exercises’ prior to your enlightenment – as you named it – like when you say: ‘I generated love for all and sundry (...). I diminished hate and anger and sadness and loneliness by surrendering to and living in love and oneness (...). I adopted the principle of pacifism (‘turn the other cheek’) and developed Goodness of the highest order. I cleansed and purified myself of all impure thoughts and deeds and worked both hard and industriously in my daily work. I practised honesty and humility in all my interactions with other people’. However, if I understand what you say, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ must be asked each moment to achieve the goal of living ‘merely’ this moment of being alive. Also, I believe you intend to convey the meaning that if one perceives that the response is not ‘feeling good’, one has to study the causes (conditionings, fears, etc., though I’ll get back to this in my next question) but one does not have to oppose any thought to regain any state of ‘feeling good’. Is all that correct? Or, on the contrary, one must do something? (Again, it is very difficult for me to express all this into another language. I don’t know if I am accurate enough or if I am using the exact terms I’d like to ... Please, re-ask me whatever you need to clarify ... ).

3) So, I would like to know – if you are willing and/or able – more precisely what you call ‘undo all the conditioning and brainwashing’ to ... I understand what it means, but not how you propose to achieve it. I’ll give you two examples of my life with total different approaches to see if I can understand better the ‘how’ of what you’re saying:

– One approach could be the same way – in my comprehension, naturally; I could be wrong – my ‘tragic sense of life’ was slowly removed from me without a direct work on it, without replacing it for a concept like the reincarnation, etc. (rather than that, it was a kind of ‘natural’ consequence of the practices I was doing, making me being more aware of myself, etc.). With an approach like this ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ would undo all the conditioning ‘by itself’, by the mere practicing of the repetition which, by the effect of forcing us to live just this moment – one after another – would achieve the ‘undo’ by leaving the conditionings ‘no place’ – nor just a fraction of a second – to ‘express’ themselves.

– Another approach could be the way I finished smoking: at the beginning of practicing Logosofía, I tried to quit for the second time (few years before, the first one consisted of mere resistance to the temptation, which became a total failure). I wrote a detailed work about it which might be translated to show you exactly what I did, but the essence is: for less than a month I observed my acts and the thoughts related with them. That investigation revealed three main causes related to my smoking desire: the first one was pleasure. At first, a cigarette could be added to my acts to enjoy them much more; as time went by, this possibility became a necessity: a cigarette had to be added to an act to enjoy it ... or merely to be able to do it. The second cause was figuration – showing off – (a mix built of vanity, pride, etc) (evidenced, for instance, through the gestures my face adopted with the cigarette, my poses, etc.). The last one (the more essential and the ‘progenitor’ of all this showing off or figuration) was a deep lack of confidence on myself (for example, talking to a woman, talking about vital or important matters, in a discussion, etc.. One of the ways this two psychological deficiencies (as Logosofia called them: negative thoughts that turn, as time goes by, into deeply rooted characterological deficiencies) manifested itself through the vice of smoking. When I first saw the figuration so deeply related with the many cigarettes I smoked, the thought weakened. When I saw later the thought of unconfidence (or lack of confidence) being the deeper and hidden cause, I felt the thought releasing me. I mean: I felt a kind of physical relief and somehow the thought deflated itself. With an approach like this, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ would not undo all the conditioning ‘by itself’. Rather than that, it would be necessary to study oneself a lot. You, Alan, Peter and others say so about conditioning. But how to do it? In a similar way to the one I have described?

Finally, I’d prefer not to write to you through the mailing list, but personally. The mailing list could be a good resource for exchanging information about our experiences with thoughts, feelings, fears, the way we analyse them, etc. Instead, at least judging by most messages I’ve read, it’s a good place to take a shot at being ‘someone’. And a way of getting involved in a discussion. But in most cases, just a theoretical one. I think they all ought to be worried about the best way of practicing what you propose, because in my experience, if someone did not live what you called (or have choose to call; I do not know who has created the term) a PCE (or if they can’t remember it), it is pointless to discuss about it. But even so, the forum (and you too, which I do not understand very well why) gets boggled into very long discussions about matters like history, religion or rhetorical questions and even words. I’m interested on these topics too, but not in the way it seems to be there. At best, just like a secondary tool (if applicable) of knowing myself a little more. Far away is the time when I could discuss anything until five in the morning to force other person to agree with my views, although I called it ‘just talking’. Of course, the discussions could be long and useful at the same time and motivated by a truly intention of discovering. But it’s not the case of the list. My question is: could I write to you personally, by e-mail?

I have another questions to point out related to the ‘theory’ (attentiveness vs. apperceptiveness vs. actual freedom vs. PCE, etc.) and I’d like to get deeper on the causes because I left Logosofía, but as it seemed at the beginning, this message is getting too long.

I’ll wait for your answer, letting you rest now (!) and writing you again after that, OK?. Thanks in advance for the attention you will give to all this.