This is very interesting to read, I have wondered about these things for a while and reading your post @Srinath has made we wonder to what extent have I dogmatically taken on a certain way of becoming free as set in stone. It seems to make sense that with actual freedom being so new and with such a small data pool, the understanding of what is the optimal way for all to become free is ‘in progress’.
I am not Virtually free and I have not had EE’s/PCEs by the bucketful yet so speaking from limited experience but what I have observed in myself so far is that I have applied the ‘traditional way’ to whittle myself down enough that I am relatively happy and harmless and have much more clarity in general vs when I first started.
However the limitations of continuing to apply the same sort of approach have been becoming apparent lately as continuing to whittle myself down seems difficult and maybe counterproductive considering there is a slightly different way to go about this.
The slightly different approach which you have mentioned recently is what I have been applying and it is still working very well. In short the focus has been on seeing myself as a totality and moving towards purity. Where investigation has come in is that firstly it helped to whittle myself down enough that I can be relatively happy and harmless secondly it helped to demarcate ‘me’ as a feeling being enough that this other approach became possible in the first place. I don’t think I could have moved towards purity when I first started this because I was truly careering around in confusion and delusion.
So to sum up the approach (and please let me know if I am misunderstanding anywhere) that you are suggesting 1 - Whittle the social identity enough that I am relatively happy and harmless and I have demarcated ‘being’ enough so that the next step is possible. 2 - See ‘myself’ as a totality and continue moving towards purity, eventually have bucketfuls of EE’s PCE’s (these EE’s, PCE’s will continue to show the difference between ‘being’ and purity). 3 - Having experienced purity enough and having an acute understanding of the difference between ‘me’ and this purity, the possibility of Actual freedom via self immolation becomes an option.
Investigation may still continue to be applied whilst doing all this but it is not the main driving force, I actually had a cool example of this the other day which I wrote about in my post - Seeing/accepting the ground of being and allowing pure intent - #2 by Cub933.