Zigzag Idiot

Passionate debate in the forum over Jordan Peterson. Here's my very condensed 2 cents,,, Jordan Peterson's whole world view seems to be based on reaction to the recently labeled mean green liberal democrats. I understand it in part because I'm surrounded by people who think like him. The Hillary haters,,,, I was one of them years ago. Being from Arkansas, I've observed the Clintons since the late seventies. I see Hillary in part as a product of her generation. She has that phony meet the public face that was born very much out of necessity coming of age in the South of the 60's and 70's. What's funny is that I'm around several orange worldview women who hate her but act exactly like she does with the whole 'put on your public face' kind of thing. We live in a totally different world now but the conditioning of her personality was set in that previous time. People like Peterson are unable to understand the split in Hillary's persona and so stay fixed in a place which can only demonize her. A coincidental misfortune is the complete lack of common sense that seems to be a part of the green learning curve as it has manifested in the last 40 years. In my view, yellow comes about when greens regain common sense which is often abandoned in embracing greater compassion. One factor in Trump getting elected and people like Peterson seeing things the way they do is a skewed understanding of Green but mostly in part because of this 'Green shadow' of abandoning common sense. Peterson and to a much worse degree, Trump exploit this stereotype of the eternally liberal hippie with their liberal arts education,,,, do- gooderism,, no common sense tax and spend,, self righteous,,, blah, blah blah,,. Although people like this still exist, there are others who have grown beyond but Peterson and those like him just refuse to acknowledge this. Thus they perpetuate this old stereotype which in a world with a shrinking middle class seems to provide the answer (and scapegoat) to the misery and decline of living standard that has come about ironically from the unrealized misguidedness of trickle down conservative economics. The real giveaway for understanding Peterson is seeing his underlying negativity and how it creates a circular logic that seems on the surface very reasonable. He is also unable to detect the Hillary who has grown but can only relax and be herself when the Cameras are off,,,

Yes. I think both methods of emptiness and concentration reinforce one another in putting one in a space that helps reveal 'being' as our true nature instead of thoughts (monkey mind or discursive awareness) mixed with feelings resulting in emoting. Emoting also being a stuck condition of being identified with thoughts/feelings. Being, on the other hand allows one to rest in awareness that can watch thoughts and feelings arise. I'm really seeing 3 separate methods being discussed though. Meditation in 'emptiness' - concentration practices for mindfulness and overall Inquiry for discovering ones mechanicalness. All three helps point one towards the realization of being as an actual felt experience. IMO.

I think the capacity for objectless awareness is key for developing Witness Consciousness. The concentration practices which develop mindfulness or the capacity for staying present helps with integration and shadow work. One end result of concentration practices in the long run will also be having more control of one's attention.

My Centering Prayer meditation does the same thing as Rupert Spira's meditation. I also have a concentration practice that is similar to what I think Leo is reffering to which is good for 'mindfulness'. Doesn't Leo also have a do nothing meditation? Centering Prayer, it is said cultivates "objectless awareness" or another way to put it, 'non-conceptual awareness'. No objects in awareness at all, including thoughts. Of course there are the constant intrusions of thought but in brief periods when there is objectless awareness, everything is still and quiet inside.

Courage and Inquiry I call this the Socratic method because Socrates was the first major figure we know who engaged this process directly, who sat down with people and asked them pointed questions such as, What is courage? Everybody thought they knew what courage was, but he led them in inquiry, first showing them that they did not know, and then guiding them through questions so they could find out for themselves. He knew the answer for himself, but when he asked the question, he asked it from the place of not knowing. He knew, but he knew that he didn't know everything, and because of that his inquiry was always alive. That's why so many people flocked around him; they were excited by that energy of inquiry. He could have just told them the answer, but they wouldn't have learned anything, for the important thing is to learn how to inquire, how to ask questions... ...Activating the Red latifa provides the soul with the strength and capacity to reach and discern what one loves and wishes to unite with. It gives one the energy and fire, the initiative and courage, to go after one's heart’s desire.... ...At this juncture of our unfoldment, we need even more strength in order to go forward. Here strength appears in another form that is necessary for our inquiry. When there is fear, the quality that is needed is fearlessness. Fearlessness does not mean the total absence of fear reactions, it means that fear does not scare you away from your inquiry—you still go on. At such times, you need courage to keep looking at the truth even if it terrifies you—to face the fact that you’re going to feel insecure as you go forward into the unknown. It takes a daring attitude to cross that threshold. In other words, for us to continue with inquiry when we are afraid, we need to be courageous, we need to be strong of heart, we need to become lionhearted. But what we need to become lionhearted about is the truth. All kinds of things can happen—disruptions, hardships obstacles, fears, and inadequacies. You might feel helpless for a few days, or a few years. Some people can go crazy on the spiritual path, and some people even kill themselves. These difficulties of the inner journey are well known and have been documented throughout history... Bold Openness This is the time when we need tremendous courage, immense strength, and an adventurous attitude. For the true explorer, the bold voyager, risk is always a part of the adventure. So if you are truly interested in the farthest reaches of reality, and the inquiry is a blazing fire within you, then you too will experience this boldness. If your heart is open, this openness will manifest as courageousness. It will become a courageous, bold openness, a daring openness. In fact, you can become so courageous you dare reality: "Show me! Let me see into your mystery!" We’ve seen that openness appears as love, as curiosity; with the red latifa, it appears as courage and daring, an adventurous attitude. Without this quality, you will tend to stay with what you already know or believe about reality. Then openness will have limits and boundaries to it: "Yes, I'm open, but only if what happens confirms what I already know." You might feel this way especially when you’ve fallen into the ocean and you feel like you’re drowning—it can be hard to stay open to see what’s true. You think, “I’m going to die, to disappear. I’m terrified!” But if you let go and let yourself disappear, you might find, “Oh, I didn’t die, I’m water—amazing!” To surrender in this way when we’re terrified requires courage—not just love, and not just trust. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 110, 257, 281

Conscious love evokes the same in response. Emotional love evokes the opposite. Physical love depends on type and polarity. Faith of consciousness is freedom. Faith of feeling is slavery. Faith of body is stupidity. Hope of consciousness is strength. Hope of feeling is cowardice. Hope of body is disease. - From Gurdjieff's writings. ?‍♂️

In Martin Butler's Out of Control podcast, I thought his almost cynical mocking of being positive was a bit too much. I don't think his intention was to mock but rather to contrast a subtlety between true authenticity and imagined authenticity. To put it another way, in being only positive we end up actually repressing a part of our nature which invites in the pendulum of duality or ego backlash. The Work teaches not to express negative emotions which means to just sit with it and own it and in a metaphorical sense - to eat this energy and not reactively give expression to it. The less reactive we become over time, the more impartial we are. This greater degree of impartiality becomes an entry into nondual Consciousness. Nondual Consciousness = Being = Love with a big L.

I need to watch this one again. A Course in Miracles says Love can have no opposite because it's all encompassing. Also the idea that 'the special relationship' is a fallacy, if not actually pathological.

Just watched your videos above. I appreciate your articulation about working with resistance along with your fearlessness in doing a video journal. Healthy light heartedness and spontaneity! Thanks for sharing. Saw this and wanted to post so others could appreciate your talent.

I think maybe so and specifically it's connection to intuition and the sixth chakra, perhaps.,,,? I feel a little guilty for taking what is a synchronicity for me and possibly being a distraction to you in your busy life. One thing I haven't mentioned was having an experience of 'inner seeing' in Centering Prayer about a month or so before I started hearing this cricket sound. This all happened a little over a year ago around Christmas. This inner seeing experience was actually kind of devastating on a personal level. In other words, it's was not a pleasant experience but because of it, I can say there was an increase in my overall experience of awareness. There are other subtle factors which makes this something of a whole new category of experience for me. I know it sounds weird. It is weird! Actually hearing a chorus of crickets fluctuating in intensity nearly all the time and when it's 20 degrees outside and then the synchronous revelation of it just a few weeks before I found Actualize.org,,,, it's just been a strange experience. This on top of some of the woo woo-ness included in that website. Just putting some of this into writing is probably helping to me in further integrating this experience. I appreciate being given the space to do this.

I had to share a synchronicity about this video. I've been hearing Crickets continuously for over a year. I'm going to try and post the bookmark to the forum post that I made not long ago. I'm having trouble copying the bookmark. This is the content of my post anyway. Paranormal expiences Share Here Your Paranormal Experiences Over a year ago I began hearing a chorus of crickets. I hear it nearly all of the time and it fiuctuates in intensity. I wrote it off as maybe some form of tinnitus . While in a online reading for Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson this past fall, I was researching the Gurdjieffian word/phrase Nironossion World sound when I ran into the following website about the activation of the Alta Major chakra. References heavily, A the sound of crickets. My intuition is better but there is nothing so far as dramatic phenomenon. http://humanityhealing.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/The-Cerebellum-and-the-Alta-Major.pdf

@tsuki Good video! Thanks. I like shorter videos like this one that packs a lot into just a few minutes. I'll go check out The School Of Life and see what else they have. I watched a Martin Butler video a little earlier. It's about 20 minutes so for those with a busy day, it may be one to skip over. But for those who have the time and are fairly new to doing Inquiry and are interested, he has quite a few useful things to say. I read everyone's Journal and try to watch all the videos that get posted even if it's just a song or music video. Especially if it's someone who rarely posts videos. Just sayin,,,,

To me, skillful means is about the ability to connect with others at a level deeper than words by the use of words. Maybe the ability to console others without them feeling like they're being talked down to but instead as equals, as a friend who is simply saying, " I hear you" or "you're speaking from a place I recognize". There is a fair amount of misunderstandings in the forums. Because of the human condition, it's hard for it to be another way. This kind of friction and misunderstanding in itself, though, can be used as a reminding factor if one tries. A good deal of the time it seems like projections from the ones being spoken to are often the cause for the appearance of this confusion but for the most part it is the lack of skillful means in reaching out or connecting to others which manifests as a 'know it all' or some version of arrogance from the perspective of those being addressed. "Meeting others where you find them" is a term used by Ken Wilbur about skillful means which correlates with recognizing where someone is at in the Spiral Dynamics model and speaking from the level of that perspective. Wilbur also suggests speaking at about a half of a spiral level beyond the other at times to help lead them a little 'higher' in terms of the SD model. There are those in the forum who can run circles around me intellectually but on the other hand, I can often see right through some of their bullshit because of lack of integration. So, in a sense, Being can trump intelligence. Of the many 'lines of development', most everyone has a strong suit or genius in which they can see completely through some parts of everyone else. Today may be wonderful or it may be a shit show. In being, separate from ego/personality, I can recognize where you are speaking from. In that sense, I am you. It doesn't define who you are or who I am. It's just an experience of temporary perspective and simply letting others know that they are heard is often all that's needed. We don't need the seemingly ever present "don't shit on a mad rattlesnake type of advice", but when we get it or see others getting it, the inner friction can be used as reminding factor for the deeper transrational part of oneself that is beyond competition. We can let go and become something larger than simply a reaction to others mechanicalness.

Working with divided attention is crucial for developing Witness Consciousness. Directed attention - Kings. - intellectual center Drawn attention - Queens. - emotional center Dispersed attention - Jacks. - instinctive center There are a handful of categories of attention itself. Is all of your attention gathered up and directed by your will? Or is your attention drawn from one thing of interest to another, maybe sometimes becoming dispersed in trying to handle the flow of the chaotic world? The metaphor of having ones own hermetically sealed atmosphere, that Maurice Nicoll uses, extends to the width of the outstretched arms according to the Shamans of Nagualism, descibed by them as the luminous egg (aura) that seers can see. Having inner quiet means your atmosphere is not polluted by anything outside of it. Just a clean atmosphere that is still and quiet. There can be inner stillness as well even if the barn is on fire. The first step is gathering up all of your attention and then use some kind of concentration practice for maintaining an ability to direct your attention instead of letting it become dispersed or by way of the emotional center, drawn away by some allurement in which there is passion that causes Self forgetting.The capacity to divide the attention to the degree that you're separated from your thoughts and emotions enough to observe them. Presto, Witness Consciousness.

I had just watched this podcast by Martin Butler before I read your earlier post. Just because of the synchronicity I thought I would post it. ?‍♂️

Aligning The Ladder of Reason with Spiral Dynamics and The Law of Octaves Perfect Idiot Master Idiot. Coral. Do Polyhedral Idiot Genial Idiot Patented Idiot. Turquoise SD. Ti Authentic Idiot Swaggering Idiot Doubting Idiot. Yellow La Enlightened Idiot Zigzag Idiot Round Idiot. Green Sol Square Idiot Squirming Idiot. Orange. Fa Compassionate Idiot. Blue. Mi Hopeless Idiot. Red. Re Arch Idiot Super Idiot. ? Do Ordinary Idiot

Focusing on context this morning more than content and particulars. Resting in the peripheral vision instead of direct/predator vision, as practice. Open and spacious. Feeling rather than thinking. Being rather than doing.

Thanks! Good for you in going about it with a degree of balance,,,,, The fact of it not being addictive is reassuring. I appreciate your sharing of experiences.

I'm still in process of acquiring Modafinil. I look forward to seeing how it can help me with getting in touch with deeper levels of witnessing which usually correlates into a capacity for greater continuity. I grew up in a time before adhd and Aspergers were being diagnosed. As an adolescent, it seemed so weird that amphetamines completely calmed me out and then years later I see people getting prescribed Ritalin and such for attention deficit disorder. So, taking this into perspective, I believe it could very well benefit my work on strengthening the witnessing capacity.

I'm pasting a part of a post I made in another Jounal yesterday which summarizes well enough for now, my early disfunction. Completing this short biographical summary. I'm 51 years old but I stunted my personality development as an adolescent due to drug and alcohol abuse. I was almost completely socially dysfunctional for about 18 months around age 20. The salvaged personality I ended up with in my 20's couldn't relax enough to be myself. This just compounded my natural weirdness and made me a disaster at meeting women. As a result, I ended up cynical and hating women for a long time for being objects of desire, that I could not have. This just created a self fulfilling negative feedback loop. This has been healed, though.

It's not until we have inner quiet that we can really observe our awareness. If you can watch your thoughts and emotions with detachment. That's being the Watcher or the witness. How about the quality of 'attention'? Can you direct all your attention on one thing? Or Is the attention dispersed some? Periodic daydreaming? A third category is drawn attention. Feelings tend to draw attention out from under our conscious control. The most important one I think is negative emotion. It's more difficult to maintain objectivity about. We identify with the emotional suffering and start becoming reactive usually. We identify when there is distress,,,,,, understandably, but it's re-entry back into hard duality of good and bad. Being the Watcher has a taste of nonduality, actually, in the sense that one is experiencing a greater feeling of being impartial and of spaciousness or 'oceanic' quality of experience. Experiencing inner quiet and being the detached watcher of thoughts and emotions continuously, usually takes a quite a bit of inquiry to build up the capacity to not get knocked out by life's random shocks. The watcher or the witness is called 'Observing I' in the fourth way which leads to a deeper experience called the 'Permanent Witness.' Ted Nottingham really explains it good. Hope this was some help.

We have a lot in common. I bet you're an adrenal/mars endocrine type. Because of its composition this type has more sex energy than the other types. I'm 51 years old but I stunted my personality development as an adolescent due to drug and alcohol abuse. I was almost completely socially dysfunctional for about 18 months around age 20. The salvaged personality I ended up with in my 20's couldn't relax enough to be myself. This just compounded my natural weirdness and made me a disaster at meeting women. As a result, I ended up cynical and hating women for a long time for being objects of desire, that I could not have. This just created a self fulfilling negative feedback loop. This has been healed, though. What I really had to say was - Expect new realizations in the next few years that will alter your perspective from what it is now. ?Thanks for sharing,,,