Yesterday, I wrote about Actual Freedom in my own words, and it was incredibly liberating to put my thoughts into writing. It felt much like the relief I experience when I unload a pile of to-dos into my reminders app—no longer needing to carry them in my mind or worry about forgetting them. Writing always brings me clarity because it directs my attention along a specific train of thought, helping me organize my ideas and see them more clearly.
Today I re-read it and found some mistakes and some other things that I would write differently now. But moderators (such as my “vizinho” @claudiu!) have removed by ability to edit after some hours (I’m joking: I totally understand and agree with their decision).
The text is not beautifully written, but this was mostly a selfish endeavor, and it really helps me to write in a way that maps directly to the way I think.
I made several decisions when writing that text that I’m happy with. I ended up calling the ego/self/ simply “identity” because, while it is an oversimplification, it is, in my opinion, the most useful way to look at it, in the context of Actual Freedom, for a person with no spiritual baggage.
For me it helps to think of the ego/self as an identity and think of it in terms of being a construct instead of an illusion. The term illusion is not great because it can mean:
Illusion:
- a false idea or belief
- a deceptive appearance or impression
- an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience
By using the term construct instead, I can then say that we can “deconstruct the construct” when we are investigating for eg our beliefs. Because it’s not a matter of removing beliefs. In a way, you replace “beliefs with other beliefs”.
Belief:
- an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof
- trust, faith, or confidence in (someone or something)
More precisely, you replace one belief with another idea that you trust to be true. Ideally, you’ve checked your biases, examined the data and facts, and arrived at an idea that’s closer to the truth. I don’t fool myself into thinking that I’ve swapped a misguided belief for an irrefutable scientific truth. The key point is that this new idea isn’t tied to my identity — I no longer identify with this belief. If someone comes along and says “You are wrong about that, here’s proof”, I’ll say “great!” without feeling attacked.
The other part that had me confused for a long time which I also wrote about was the no feelings. I always had a hard time thinking about this one. “How can someone have no feelings?”, I would think to myself. “Doesn’t that mean no pain?”. It was funny that the answer came from the now famous “Vineeto’s Encounters Cop” tale:
All the sensations of discomfort and physical pain continue but don’t need to lead to negative feelings/negative emotional state/suffering. I did some more research on the website just now, which I could have done before 
Just because I have physical pain, that didn’t stop me from feeling good. [source]
I can also confirm that it is possible to remain feeling good while physical pain is occurring [source]
EDIT: A disclaimer: If my writing looks inconsistent at times, it is because when I’m lazy I grab my text and ask ChatGPT to revise it.