| The researcher studied the experience of "personal freedom" within a North American community of spiritual practitioners gathered around a contemporary nagual from Mexico named Miguel Angel Ruiz. The research objective was to describe and evaluate the structure, meaning and social value of this lived experience, one central to a contemporary New Religious Movement whose members claim to be following ancient Toltec traditions.;The study was based on participation and observation and methodologically organized through a constructive exercise in philosophy of method. In the course of his own participation-observation and in-depth interviews with twelve apprentices, the researcher generated a hermeneutical-phenomenological description of "personal freedom" and its psychosocial locations, including and especially as it appeared within his own consciousness. In order to refine his attestation of "personal freedom" the researcher concluded the study with critical reflections upon the psychosocial locations of the phenomenon, associated problems related to knowledge, truth and human suggestibility, and the social value of the apprentice's quest.;"Personal freedom," was found to be a subjective, interior state of consciousness. Accomplished through a particular psychospiritual program, "personal freedom" is experienced as a multiplication of options for living, a liberation and realization of one's "true self," and an openness to explore avenues of realities previously unknown. Moreover, as a religious, spiritual and/or transcendental experience, "personal freedom" refers to an opening of the self to possibilities beyond horizons formerly accepted as naturally, personally or socially given. |
