So so far no updates with regards to ‘my’ self-immolation but there has been some notable things going on recently. Actually it seems the past few weeks I have taken a bit of a step back from the rather intense involvement and allowed the dust to settle.
Recently I have changed the way I teach and train BJJ in line with something called the ecological approach. Which without going into too much detail is essentially a way of developing skill which uses the constraints of the environment in order to foster active problem solving rather than relying on choreographed/artificial repetition. So for example instead of showing a pre-digested set of moves which the students are meant to drill and memorise I instead create games which allow the students to problem solve in real-time and develop skill that way. It’s been very successful both in terms of skill development as well as just making it engaging and fun.
But the reason I write this is because of how this links in with the successful application of the actualism method. I have been sort out circling this for years now and I always saw some issue with the way I and others on the forum were approaching things. I called it the problem of the master-disciple structure, using recipes, making the map sacred etc. It was all pointing in the same direction though, which is that knowledge/skill/wisdom is not passed down through recipes or maps, rather it is developed/discovered through a hands on involvement. Essentially it is to say that one cannot skip the actual process of searching and discovery, not in actualism and not in BJJ. If one does then one is merely moving their finger on an imaginary map, a map constructed from the description of other’s discoveries. If this map is focused on at the expense of hands on experience one actually ends up at a disadvantage rather than advantage, as attention is focussed on the wrong target.
This is something that Vineeto has mentioned on this forum recently, that even though there is more and more information on the actualism method and the actualism process, this can become another game that ‘I’ can play in order to divert from actual discovery. So the other reason for taking a step back recently was for me to see where I am at without any of this information, without the map, without the recipe etc, where is it that I am at experientially when I simply let the dust settle.
What I see now is just how much of that kind of activity I always did, of the searching for recipes, of trying to develop systems, of focusing on the map etc. I remember in a zoom chat someone asked Geoffrey if he had some notes he could share from the ‘he’ that was. And he replied to the effect that this would not be beneficial as ‘he’ was the master bullshitter, and of course it makes sense that other 'I’s are fundamentally the same. Those notes were ‘his’ theories that emerged only when ‘he’ was already lost and off the wide and wondrous path.
This morning for example I noticed that there was this bad feeling that I would often experience before work, and this time I didn’t do any of that kind of activity that I would previously engage in - essentially some kind of sophisticated activity. Rather I saw in the simplest of terms that I am afraid of going to work because something might happen where I am told off. It’s really no more complicated than that, and with this seeing I was back to feeling good and now with a pinpointed cue to watch out for similar events. It was not sophistication which succeeded here, it was naivete, a sincere simplicity.
So to summarise all this I have been observing that the method is indeed simple, in fact too simple for the mind looking for special techniques, crystallised systems, sacred maps etc. Furthermore this reliance on recipes is a damaging influence on one’s ability to actually discover for oneself. And lastly is the fact that unless I actually live something then I don’t know it, and in order to live it I have to discover it - memorising a system and then performing gymnastics in order to emulate it is not it.