Zigzag Idiot

It’s Monday and some water lines were frozen. Wonderful wonderful,,, More Maurice Nicoll SELF-JUSTIFYING “You know that one of the specific efforts we are taught to make in our personal work is the effort against self-justifying. Self-justifying is a complicated and very interesting process of inner and outer lying whereby we put ourselves in the right...If you are always going to be right, you will never be in the wrong, and if you are never in the wrong, you will never change. To feel one is always right is to block the way to any self-change...Remember, the more you find yourself-justifying the more certain you may be that you are lying.” V. 1, p. 142, V. 2, p. 558 SELF-JUSTIFYING II “Suppose a person is suddenly asked why he is so negative? Probably either he will indignantly deny that he is negative or say that he has good reason to be. In both cases, he justifies himself—that is, he justifies his negative emotions. . .The root of the matter lies in this picture of always being right and so never being actually in the wrong. Here a very powerful force is at work to keep us asleep in illusions about ourselves.” YOU HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO BE NEGATIVE’ “Now the Work says you have a right not to be negative...To be able to feel this draws down force to help you. You stand upright, as it were, in yourself, among all the mess of your negativeness, and you feel and know that it is not necessary to lie down in that mess. To say this phrase in the right way to yourself, to feel the meaning of the words: ‘I have a right not to be negative,’ is actually a form of self-remembering, of feeling a trace of real ‘I,’ that lifts you up above the level of your negative ‘I’s which are all the time telling you without a pause that you have every right to be negative.” I like this last one. Note: It doesn’t say you have no right to be negative. It says you have a right not to be negative! This isn’t forced positivity either. It’s seeing that complaining is completely useless and with it comes a feeling of acceptance. Realization that you can accept what is and not lose energy repressing WHAT IS. The bear doesn’t eat you. You eat the bear.

“All this ascription to ourselves of powers that we do not possess is the real lying that the Work is ultimately concerned with. And this unconscious lying is what through self-observation we have to become gradually conscious of. Unless this begins in us, Personality—which of course thinks it can do—remains active and Essence passive. This becoming gradually conscious of the part that pride, vanity, buffers and deep sleep play in our ordinary thinking and behavior is called the first phase of the Work. What is this phase called? It is called Awakening.” V. 3, p. 1160 - Maurice Nicoll

I’ve been enjoying this discussion,,,

Rumi People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.” There’s no one with intelligence in this town except that man over there playing with the children, the one riding the stick horse. He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child’s play.” Try something different. Surrender.” — Rumi I don’t share my inner world all that often in this journal. It’s sporadic. I notice how some people don’t share their inner world at all. Some keep track of their disciplines. Some tell of their outer world and then some of them share a mix of inner and outer world, as I do. I observe my multiplicity. It can be called multifaceted or multi-dimensional. Perhaps compartmentalized or even fragmented,,,,, Can I be integrated and individuated one day and then another day be fragmented, confused, and in a state of psychic entropy? Yes. Is there sometimes a sense of pride connected with admitting such things and being vulnerable? Yes. Do you see yourself as one or many? I feel that through being vulnerable one can arrive at a more stable condition of being more invulnerable than before. This degree of being fluctuates and always will. To deny this is inherently self-deceptive. One day death will arrive with perhaps an illness as it often does. With illnesses comes a tax on one’s awareness and degree of being. Just pay attention to those who are in your life. It is a sobering observation how awareness is often taxed heavily as one gets older. Not always though, but it seems more often than not. Being too serious, having anger, pride, deceit, greed, cynicism, apathy. These put a tax on my awareness and life itself. Light heartedness does not.

This video goes with the comments I made in the entry above having to do with the 7 levels of humans. Some of what I wrote above is merely guessing at the levels above me. (The higher can see the lower but the lower can only guess at the higher). Some of what I wrote about was concerning my arrested development and social ineptness. I consider myself more individuated than integrated and due to my age and life experiences put myself at human #5 but arrived too soon skipping work at the #4 level human in this Fourth Way assessment of levels of consciousness. This guy has many videos to choose from. For those who may want to look.

Crystalized Ted Nottingham uses a term that is rarely used outside of Fourth Way groups. The word is "crystalized". It is used as a verb here. Ted states that the teachings of Gurdjieff' were crystalized by his own people. They learned in a conceptual way and did get some benefit from what they learned but the majority of those who have gotten into this Teaching have, through identification, constrained it into different sects who disagree and argue with one another. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky used the term as a description of people who reached completion in their understanding. Some more advanced than others. This means people can chrytalize prematurely. In short, this means someone can attain a certain individuation which has outpaced their integration. In Fourth Way jargon this is an individual who is type #5 human who has not completed enough integration at level #4 and therefore cannot go on to level #6 which is at a very high level of Being. Humans at level #7 are capable of unconditional Love. Love with a big "L". For those individuals who have crystalized at level #5 prematurely and have to go back and integrate more at level #4 before they can enter the domain of level #6 humans. Well,,, this requires a good deal of intentional suffering or a reestablishing of a certain amount of discipline.

Ted gives a brief and meaningful introduction to the Fourth Way. Sometimes called esoteric Christianity in certain lineages of the teacher George Gurdjieff. A Course in miracles- ACIM- has been another path which has helped me to overcome the dogmaticly constrained Christianity of my youth. Please excuse me for replying to this post in this section as I did. I didn’t realize it was in the topic section of video ideas for Leo. If a moderator wants to move this to another section of the forum. That would be great.

Not too long ago I interjected my opinion/answer into a discussion on another journal. It was kinda rude of me to that.,,,, Just blurt out my unsolicited opinion. The uncomfortableness I felt afterwards helped me to 'see' myself. Or as is said in fourth way jargon,, Observe one of my "I's" making itself known. There was a form of inflation or self importance that needed to display its cleverness or knowledge. This is a very common occurrence here in the forum. Often there is someone needing to one-up the others in a discussion. I see this in myself at times. It could be related to spiritual materialism. You could also say it's a zen devil characteristic that comes about quite often from egoistic tendencies that are not recognized in oneself. Seeing these types of communication can be a good way to work on Oneself. It's not a comfortable thing to see in oneself. But if you turn a blind eye and let self deception cover it up, you're just bullshiting yourself. Not everyone has this tendency in their expressions. Some have it more than others and sometimes it manifests rather innocently but in hindsight or from others reaction to your lack of 'skillfull means'. It can be observed. Take heart from the insightful saying, "awareness is cureative" over time,,, or in the long run. There is no one -time across the finish line of enlightenment or realization. Many people have this stance in their views of self or Self or no-self in their self deceptive view of themselves as a realized or awakened. It is being blinded by one's own clarity and I'll go out on a limb and say it's every damn one of you and me as well. It is what fairly new people in the work of actualization use to prop themselves up. So if this hits you in the gut,,, hooray for you! In this truth that won't let you bullshit yourself. Sit with this and gain a greater awareness and understanding over time. You'll be a more forgiving person for having seen actions like this in yourself. It is advised in the work literature to not criticize yourself. Don't beat yourself up. That's often very difficult for many people. Myself included. This work will humble you. Have a good day and try to be lighthearted.

Sometimes, which is most often,,,,, always, but not,,,,,,, When I express myself. It opens a doorway of a compulsive need to keep on expanding on the original idea until it becomes lost among the many ideas which gathers in the storm of my mind. This is a neurotic condition in which one has left the realm of Being and has entered into this form of consciousness, that's a mess. A person of Being can self-observe. With some space within this self-inquiry. He can say to himself, "You poor bastard. Get out of your head and be an Ordinary Idiot once more. Suzuki Roshi pointed out. "Zen mind is beginners mind". It is there where you become quiet inside, again. These guys are way too serious, but the message is beautiful.

The AR-15 is pretty sweet. I can feel the speed of its 223 bullet when I fire one. Friends of mine have let me shoot theirs,,,, I inherited my Grandpa’s Winchester lever action 30-30. I like it because it’s so short, for a rifle. It’s easy maneuver around with. I’m a wannabe passivist. For default home defense. I hurl a can of peas,,,

@ryoko , Thought I would leave a couple of links and give an opinion or two. I like the subject. You may not agree with what I leave. That’s perfectly fine. My statements are often too preachy or blunt so please pardon my delivery of the material. This point was made to me a few years ago and It helped my understanding. Being is not who I am, it’s something I have. In the New Testament and ACIM also, the wording or question is,,, Do you have your being? My degree of being fluctuates every day and I feel that’s normal. https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/being-personal-being

Here’s my dream that I had night before last. Catching a ride back to my parents house from town. I packed a suitcase while there which took a while. Hiking the five miles back into town through cow pastures and occasional woods. I came upon an intersection a short way from the city limits. An older man was throwing a toggle chain around a semi truckload of logs. He asked for my help. While doing this we noticed some Angus bulls had gotten out on the highway. Someone shouted the Question. What are those bulls doing out on the highway? Turning to the bulls I asked them. Then I turned back to the questioner and shouted “they said they’re excited about going and seeing a newborn litter of puppies up the road a ways next to the fence on the right of way.,,, Everyone became happy and started laughing. I woke up then, laughing.

I read The life and Teachings of Carlos Castaneda years ago. Written by William Patrick Patterson, it became the fruit of his investigation into the mystery that surrounded the life of this brilliant trickster. Long story short, Castaneda reworked his understanding of the Gurdjieff work into neo-shamanism. Reading this years after I was drawn in and hypnotized, in a sense by Castaneda’s books about “sorcery” he supposedly learned from a modern indigenous Mexican shaman named Don Juan Matus. I kind of see William Patrick Patterson as the ‘Krishnamurti’ of one of the main Gurdjieff lineages. Like Krishnamurti of the Theosophical movement in the early 1900’s, Patterson walked away from a position of power and urged others to figure it out for themselves. This is completely my paraphrasing of Patterson’s relation to ‘The Work’. So, take this with a grain of salt,,,,