Hi Victoria,
I can picture living in France and studying psychology as very appealing even to me due to Brexit, even if these times are 'final' for you. Are you French?, I used to speak a mighty good French, but lack of practice made it clanky, I live in London and I am Spanish.
Yeah I came here almost 6 years ago to study, I'm American from the US actually. How cool that you spoke French! Yes unfortunately languages take constant work. Very interesting, so you're not so far away than.
I feel ashamed of my attitude, You are a fine guide, stay! I delight and appreciate your honesty and emotional detachment. Your directness and egoless ness permeate in what you say. I appreciate how you took the time to consider all the aspects of my last and full of words posts, and the equanimity for letting me go to another guide if I so desired. I would like to have you as my guide, please.
Don't feel bad, this can be an uncomfortable process. I understand completely. If you're sure, then yes I would be happy to continue guiding you.
You see, I am here to break free from my strong views , the more the better, whether in the process I find great difficulty or not, I need the direct approach, the no nonsense that you are demonstrating to me.
Ok! Perhaps it will help going forward if you know that is my guiding style. It is of course always to help you as best as I can. My job is to "poke", to ask questions that are going to challenge your beliefs (as that is the entire nature of this inquiry). If it feels like there is something to defend, it if feels uncomfortable, than that probably means we are doing something right. But if you need to take a break or breather that's ok too.
AND I have two contrary feelings in my body; anxiety and relief. The first for noticing that little by little in this enquiry, I am losing control over my "precious" beliefs, my views. The latter for the new way of experiencing that is arising for me, and these opposite feelings are causing discomfort in my life and I am not sleeping well. In the process I have been planting my difficulties in you, including mirroring my fading trust: I had not been in a similar situation for a long time, thus the reticence, the doubt, the anxiety, but also the relief and peace.
It seems it may help your anxiety knowing a bit about me and where I'm coming from so I hope you don't mind me sharing, because I do understand these contrary feelings. Before doing LU, I was obsessed with "awakening" and had tried most every spiritual practice like many. Zen buddhism in particular. And I was constantly at war with different spiritual practices and beliefs that seemed contradictory. At the time I was living in a Zen temple in Seattle and my roommate had been recommending LU to me, I think because he saw how tired of dogma and beliefs I was - it seemed that every spiritual tradition, every author, even my Zen teachers had a set of beliefs that they were trying to get me to believe (and this is very very sneaky because we are told they aren't beliefs, that they are spiritual truths or something like that). Another Zen teacher found out I was considering doing Liberation Unleashed, and they both literally offered to pay me (just something like 50-100$) to try and to finish LU. I only understood why someone would literally have paid me to do this until after, when I realized that...It simply worked. It worked when nothing else did for me. So many other practices or beliefs seemed to work for a while, but ultimately I still was stuck with this sense of restless searching. I was depressed, anxious, and felt that I just couldn't stop this tireless spiritual seeking and I was a bit disillusioned because *nothing* really worked, all of these teachings, psychology, books, videos, spiritual retreats, meditating, nothing truly solved my issue. It took me quite a while, around 6 months to finish LU. The "penny dropped" and I saw that I had been searching for something right under my nose. I actually went through a small period of complete rejection of all spiritual teachings because I was furious at how much brainwashing I had experienced (but this isn't to blame anyone, I just was so susceptible to it all because I was so desperate). I found it difficult to subscribe to my zen teachings, and to any kind of spiritual teaching after that because none of it seemed to resonate or matter and I just wanted to live life as I wasn't allowing myself to before. Sitting and meditating to attain anything whatsoever just seemed silly and ridiculous; instead I just enjoyed sitting because there was no longer any sense of "seeking".
Anyhow, my point is just to share with you that I do understand that we come from all different backgrounds and traditions. They all have value, and LU is not going to take any of that away from you. But holding onto spiritual beliefs was for me, probably the biggest hinderance to actually seeing through the illusion of self. And when I completed LU I was left with total astonishment, I thought to myself "I cannot believe that after all of this time, after everything I have tried...Something actually
worked. That doesn't mean it will work for everyone, but I do believe that this works because it is not based on
any dogma or beliefs. On the contrary, it's a stripping of these beliefs to see what is
actually happening.
And you have talked about the 10 fetters which I am aware of. I was working on the 4th and 5th fetter after LU but the nut just isn't ready to crack for me and my priorities right now are to finish my career and focus on my more material life that was so neglected during my spiritual seeking years. Anyways, you may be aware that there is a 10 fetters group for those who are interested in continuing after liberation unleashed to break the other fetters. Satyadhana as he sometimes goes by, his Buddhist name, is the one who developed the guiding process for the remaining 8 fetters and he did LU himself. I got the pleasure of meeting him when I lived in Seattle. I was already so happy and content to have been freed from so much of my anxiety and depression that was mostly due to crazy spiritual beliefs and repressing "negative emotions". But I was equally as eager to break Desire and Ill Will, the 4th and 5th fetter. He shared with me his experience and at the end of our conversation he looked at me and said "you can do this. And it's absolutely worth it".
So the point of all of this, to encourage you and to say that even though it may feel like you're treading in unknown territory and it may be anxiety-provoking. So, you can do this and it is worth it!
All of that being said, I think it is important before we continue to come back and review some basic LU guidelines. For your own progress, when you are responding to the questions and looking, please put aside all of your beliefs, anything you have learned, any and all books, videos, teachers, etc etc. You can engage with these as much as you want outside of this inquiry. But no matter how great another spiritual practice may be, it will very likely only make this process harder.
Not being able to find an answer to one of my questions is a perfect answer. "I don't know" in many cases is an excellent sign - even if it doesn't seem like it at first. Seeing through beliefs can feel uncomfortable and strange at first but again, I can only tell you that this is absolutely worth it and the only thing you risk is getting in touch with life as it is actually happening, beyond any beliefs.
So let me know when you're ready and we can start up again. Although you may not like it, I would like to pick up with the inquiry into the mind.
Wishing you a lovely day,
Wesley