Michael, I 'll get back to your question
About how to become total / and free to add my own term
I 'm having a picture of a being - intermission: My only believe currently is that our essence is just a flame - that is connected with a number of filaments.(Not talking about emanations for all that I have in mind)
The idea to process would be these filaments to get off the being, ..if they are sticked to us, to get unsticked.If there are 'having a hold with us' to lose their power. And so forth.
Tell me your ideas ....
Not a bad question, if I understand it. To achieve something like the 'freedom' that has been spoken of in this thread, just remember a great line by DJ, that we seek freedom without ever knowing what it is. That means we have a core yearning for something we intimately know, yet we don't know - we just head off in some sensed direction.
But that has almost always led back in a loop. To reach past the surface tension of our furrow entrapment, we need to take advise from those who have studied and succeeded in the past. And we need more than one technique, because we have this strange enemy that dresses up in all the things we use to fight it.
One is to divest our being of all the 'filaments' of the world within us. There are essentially two fields of action for this. One is in the meditation-contemplation field. The other is in the sophisticated arranging our outer world.
Speaking to you Nik, I'd say you should begin the recapitulation exercises explained in CC's book, including the head turning part, which CC confusingly gave conflicting instructions for over the years. That exercise is also in Buddhism, without the head turning. I spoke of this in my book, but left out the head turning part, as I though it was a bit far-fetched for most people. But I do believe it to be a fantastic trick - always adding a physical movement to any inner process increases it's power enormously.
From the other side - arranging the outer world - I'd suggest you should begin the process of removing yourself from all your family connections. Making your own money, living in a distant place from your family and friends. This should be prepared for gradually. Piece by piece you sever the social, material and psychological links to your past. We do it piece by piece. In my case, I built a new identity in secret, then choose the moment to leave. Around this time, I had a dream:
In the dream, I was secretly building a very fast red sports car in my garage. It had to be fast because I had to get to the border before the authorities knew, and closed the gates. One day, I knew the time had come. I opened the garage door, and launched forth in my red sports car. I zoomed straight for the border, which was in a tunnel. I could see the man at the gate had got the phone call as I approached, and he flicked the leaver to bring down the gate. I just passed underneath at a terrific speed as it was coming down. Once passed, I drove off into the most beautiful country, with paddocks of green and mountains - free from the clutches of the authorities.
