The cardinal rules of Reeducation, as we know, were that one could not trust one’s sense of the reality of any situation — or the motivations of any people, or one’s own. It was shocking because I would have made the opposite recommendation: face the reality of whatever situation you have and then work with it, using your judgment. Up until that time I had in fact found this methodology to work very well in life.
Portuguese is not the language I speak best. I write much better in French, for instance, but I always feel stilted in this tongue, and my pronunciation of it is inconsistent on purpose, to mark my difference from it. But in Portuguese even more than in English, I feel myself to speak more than to “be spoken.” In other words, the one who speaks is the most nearly me.
I had a major crisis the first time I went to Brazil for various reasons, the most important being that everyone I knew initially was from the Reeducated space, that is to say, in some extreme form of twisting denial, and I could not understand it. I understood every word that was said but nothing that was meant, and the words I heard did not appear to correspond at all to the realities I saw.
In the Reeducated mentality it is necessary to protect constantly against extreme errors one may make, and throw up walls against extreme errors that will be made against oneself. Yet in that Brazilian land I learned to give in entirely to the reality of a situation, without losing myself in it. That was what I found so strengthening about it, and why I ultimately liked it.
I used to test reality in the United States by asking myself, what would you think about [whatever situation] if you thought about it in Portuguese? and I would then discover what I really thought. That is to say, the question eradicated Da Whiteman right out of my head. I believe I shall start asking that question again now.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
It was shocking because I would have made the opposite recommendation: face the reality of whatever situation you have and then work with it, using your judgment.
This neatly summarises the cultural brickwall I keep running into whenever I forget myself and relax a bit. It’s as if reality itself is too fearsome a thing to be discussed directly, and that I’m made seventeen faux pas in trying to approach it thus.
Well, my friends who believe in Reeducation say they really do know from experience that what whatever they are convinced of is wrong. That is: they are aware that they hide from reality, so they have trained themselves that they must SEARCH for their actual feelings.
I think a lot of people go through life thinking, “What is my policy on this and that?” You can almost see the wheels turning in their brains as they ponder their official position on whatever is happening. I confess to having an element of that in my nature but hope it is not dominant!
I think that the reeducation types have found life so frightening that they have invented a false self to handle it for them. Little do they know that this solution is not helping to save their authentic self, which they have stowed away somewhere in a back closet of their mind. Rather, they are doing themselves ongoing damage by operating this way, because as you said elsewhere, they need to get energy from somewhere, and that energy normally comes about when one acts in the world in a genuine and open way. So by trying to protect their real self by not bringing it out into the world, they are robbing themselves of lifeforce.
Next step is that they latch onto somebody who is still able to function normally, and use their energy.
It is so strange, since the theory of Reeducation was that one’s official self was false and one had to liberate the true one. My problem, of course, was that my official self was not false, so that when I renounced it for Reeducation’s sake it felt like suicide because it was.
Using someone else’s energy due to fear of life, yes.
Hiding the authentic self, I do it too, though, and it’s not a good idea … perhaps temporarily it is, to get through a battle zone or something, but I do it so as to save that self from bad situations when really I should get out of the situation faster. It’s not a good idea because it freezes the development of said self, while the protective mask only gets battered.
I think it is never a good idea to hide the true self. The fact is that the true self, when injured, has the capacity to regenerate itself in a way that will make it stronger, whereas the false self does not have this capacity. The false self is non-organic.
Organic vs. inorganic, YES. That is why people in the false self are so inflexible … and why my people in it seem so DEAD. !!!
“I used to test reality in the United States by asking myself, what would you think about [whatever situation] if you thought about it in Portuguese? and I would then discover what I really thought. That is to say, the question eradicated Da Whiteman right out of my head.”
Love this–I will try this myself. (Although my French is vastly inferior to yours and to most French people over the age of 3. Then again, toddler French might be just the thing to obliterate da whiteman even faster!)