Zigzag Idiot

We certainly cover a wide spectrum of music. That’s good!

It did. @UDT Thank you for the detailed response!

I think this may count. Back in the 1930’s and 40’s there was a group of women artists and writers. Most who happened to be lesbian that we’re interested in the Work that Gurdjieff was teaching. One book called The Rope was specifically about this group which included Kathryn Hulme, Margarette Anderson, Georgette Leblanc, Solita Solano and others. Besides The Rope, Two books of Kathryn Hulme’s that I really enjoyed was The Nun’s Story and Undiscovered Country. https://www.gurdjieff.org/rope.htm

Some people will fully admit to having an addiction but will flatly refuse any kind of help or treatment. Often saying that they simply don’t want to quit. That was me with cigarettes. From the first time I really considered it until the day that I actually wanted to sincerely give it a try. It was 4-5 years. You can’t make someone want to quit an addiction. A lot of people, professionals included will often try shaming the addict. As far as a lot of Trump supporters go that I’ve observed. There often seems to be an ingrained cynicism or often taking pleasure in negative circumstances. Very often also having an ax to grind on some particular issue related to some aspect of liberalism. You can very much sense the feeding on negativity. That seems to be where they get ‘the juice’. Many of them anyhow.

I was shocked to see that about Ivermetin. Before the patent for Ivermectin expired I switched my method for deworming cattle to mixing diatomaceous earth in with their minerals. Had great success with it also. At the time I think the cost was around $7.00/head per treatment with Ivermectin to about about .30 cents/per head with diatomaceous earth. Its too bad diatomaceous earth couldn’t be as effective against COVID as it was for deworming and delousing cattle. The thought crosses my mind about the placebo effect maybe contributing to the success of Ivermectin against COVID ???? Any thought? Excuse me if this has already been discussed. If so, I just overlooked it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth

This one and the next are promotionals for The Point of Existence. I probably struggled more with this one than any other of Almaas’s books. But in the end, it was very fulfilling and quite rewarding!

@tsuki Glad you mentioned that. I almost quoted you from last week in the post above about how much you liked and learned from that book of Bennett’s.

The Causal realm has also been referred to as the Imaginal realm. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the word imaginal does not mean “imaginary.” That unfortunate but all too understandable confusion was created by Henry Corbin, the noted Islamic scholar, when he introduced the term Mundus Imaginalis to name that intermediate, invisible realm of causality that figures so prominently in mystical Islamic cosmology.,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,This is exactly what Corbin was trying convey by the word “imagination,” understood in the traditional sense. Imaginal reality is a valid construction which, by changing consciousness in its inner ground, changes the nature of reality in the outer world. For this world as we know it is simply the outer form—Isaak Dinesen’s snake skin— within which runs that fiery, innermost aliveness. At least when things are working well, that is. A reference about the Islamic Scholar Henry Corbin in 3 part blog written by Cynthia Bourgeault- https://northeastwisdom.org/2018/12/is-the-imaginal-realm-real/

Leo, I felt the question asked by @Adam M last Saturday and his requesting your time of birth so he could do your birth chart didn’t seem all that unreasonable. Especially with how he prefaced it. Would you care to elaborate on why you poo pood it? Do you really think it’s nonsense or are you just wanting to prevent anything that might over time get twisted and start to give the appearance of cult phenomena or cult of personality phenomena?

The first one of these excerpts I’ve posted so much I bet some may be getting sick of seeing it. These excerpts about basic trust go so well with what @Intraplanetary wrote so beautifully I couldn’t resist adding a few more from that glossary page. I didn’t get all of them though. Basic trust is such a crucial element,,,, ',,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, The Innate Sense that Life is Fundamentally Benevolent The presence of basic trust indicates that you have the innate sense that life is fundamentally benevolent, and that benevolence exists independent of you and your actions. You will have this sense to the extent that your grounding in the universe has not been disturbed. The relative presence or absence of basic trust is a belly quality, something one’s whole being is either grounded in or not. The disturbance of basic trust is a significant factor in ego development because the perspective of ego is diametrically opposed to the sense of basic trust. The ego’s perspective arises out of a lack of this trust. It is based on distrust, on paranoia, on fear, on the conviction that you're not going to be adequately taken care of and that the universe is not there to hold and take care of you in the ways that you need. This conviction causes you to believe that you have to engage in all kinds of manipulations and games to get your needs met and to make things work out. Facets of Unity, pg. 25 Trusting the Dynamism of the Inquiry In time, you develop basic trust and you learn to trust the dynamism of the inquiry. This will happen as result of several things: first, clearly recognizing the optimizing force in the dynamism of your own unfolding; second, truly seeing that optimization is the nature of the dynamism; and third, having faith that the optimizing is occurring even when you can’t feel it in the moment. Then you are trusting the guidance and the unfoldment. Basic trust – the knowing that you just need to relax and things will work out fine – is an automatic result of this developing knowledge of reality. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 122 With Basic Trust You Take Risks When you have a lot of basic trust, you are courageous and authentic. You take risks. You don't sit on your capacities. You engage in life wholeheartedly, doing what feels appropriate to you with the confidence that it will work out. Without much basic trust, you are paralyzed with fear of failure and fear of rejection. ',,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Facets of Unity, pg. 28 Without Basic Trust We Live Our Lives Defensively If basic trust informs your experience, your psyche is relaxed. Your soul is at peace with itself and with your situation, resting in the unquestioned confidence that the universe provides, that you have, and will receive, what you really need, and that things are workable. If we really have this trust, this deep inner relaxation, it becomes possible to live our lives out of love, out of an appreciation of life, out of enjoyment in what the universe provides for us, and out of compassion and kindness for others and ourselves. Without it, we live our lives defensively, in conflict with others and with ourselves, becoming self-centered and egoistic. To find our basic trust is to reconnect with our natural state that we have become separated from. When we are innately infused by reality, our soul or consciousness is completely transparent to the truth that we and the universe are one, that we are supported by reality and that reality is by its very nature good, and that what happens is inevitably right since it emerges out of that inherent perfection. When you understand this, it becomes obvious why it is so difficult to relax and let go, and why it is so important regain our basic trust. Facets of Unity, pg. 32 Without Basic Trust We React According to Our Conditioning Now we can see how the presence or absence of basic trust is crucial to the initial step in the process of the transformation of any sector of the ego. This step is only completed by giving up the particular structure we have been holding on to. Basic trust gives you the capacity and the willingness to let go of the images, identifications, structures, beliefs, ideas, and concepts -- the remnants of the past that make up the ego. Implicit in this initial step is the second one: If you are able to surrender, then you are willing to be. You are willing to not try to change things, to not manipulate them, to not push and pull at them. You are willing to just be present, which is a sort of realization itself. First, then, is the death of the old; second is the realization of Being. If you don't have basic trust, you will react to what arises in accordance with your conditioning and will want your process to go one way or another. You won’t let yourself just be present; you’ll be tense and contracted. So basic trust is needed for you to be able to allow the ego to die, and also for you to be willing to just be, without reacting. Facets of Unity, pg. 26 taken from - https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/basic-trust

J G Bennett lived a very long life with many chapters. He met Gurdjieff in Constantinople as a young Officer in the English Army. He had an off & on relationship with Gurdjieff until late in Gurdjieff’s life where he spent two years or so with Him until Gurdjieff’s death in 1949. During that time Bennett and his wife Elizabeth kept diaries. It was from these diaries that the book - Idiots in Paris - was put together. Bennett was very much a free thinker. There’s a lot about his life after the death of Gurdjieff that I’m unfamiliar with. A quote from his website- To replace all negative attitudes towards the existing world by a feeling of confidence and love towards the new world which is being born, towards the still unborn child that is the future mankind, to arouse in oneself constantly this love of the future humanity. Every time one observes in oneself some kind of negative attitude, to take this as the reminder that we human beings live on this Earth in order to serve and particularly to serve the future, and to serve with love, with hope, with confidence that it is possible for mankind to be born again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Bennett https://www.jgbennett.org/ https://www.gurdjieff.org/bennett.htm

Yep and all of us are right. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Being as the Actual Presence of True Nature We are in not using the term "being" in its everyday sense. Usually, "being" means mere existence, and that "existence" is, like everything else, experienced conceptually. The spiritual traditions, on the other hand, use this term to refer to the actual presence of true nature, which can be directly experienced. We are using the term in this latter sense. As human beings we are Presence, we are Being, we are actuality; we are not simply mental constructs. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 27 The Experience of True Nature as Nonbeing Does Not Mean that there is No Reality, No Soul or Manifestation True nature is absolute being, but also absolute nonbeing. It is both presence and absence of presence. It is both but not exactly, because these are conceptual elaborations of which true nature is innocent. We say it is both being and nonbeing, or neither, only because these are fundamental concerns for the soul. Being is the last thing the soul needs to surrender as she opens up to her true nature. As she does this she learns about nonbeing. She experiences the emptiness and ontological absence of her existence, and everything else in manifestation. So she may believe that true nature is total emptiness, absolute nothingness, complete absence of existence. The experience of true nature as nonbeing or emptiness does not mean that there is no reality, no soul or manifestation. This is a nihilistic perspective that experience and understanding do not support. The wisdom of emptiness or nonbeing is an attempt to understand the final ontological mode of things. We normally believe that things exist when we perceive them. This belief is accompanied by a subtle underlying feeling or sense of what existence is. Things feel real in a substantial way. We consciously or unconsciously feel that the existence of things is a substantial solid quality. Existence becomes the existence of substance and solidity, which becomes opaqueness if we continue in this direction. In other words, we not only perceive that things appear to our perception, and not only believe that this appearance is objective and independent of our imagination and mental construction, but feel at the same time a sense of substance to this appearance, a sense of solidity. Existence for us then is not only the true appearance of things in perception but the imbuing of what appears with a quality we call Being. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 258 None of Us is to be Blamed for Our Shortcomings Each of the boundless dimensions in our work reveals to us and teaches us something about reality and about experience. We learn that reality has true nature. We’ve been using the concept of true nature in our teaching for a long time, and now I’m introducing Total Being, which is an overlapping, though not completely identical, concept. I am leaving it ambiguous on purpose. True nature is total purity and freedom all the time. If we only say, “Everything is always true nature,” that doesn’t account for the fact that most people don’t experience things that way. We could explain this by saying, “Well, that is because they are not aware of it.” But when we understand reality or true nature, we realize that people don’t really exist the way we think they do. So when we say, “They don’t understand true nature,” we believe that they are responsible for not understanding it. But when we blame somebody for not understanding it that way, we ascribe to them an independent existence apart from Total Being. They don’t have that; nobody does. So actually, it is Total Being that is ignorant—not the individual. An individual does nothing on his own because he is a manifestation of Total Being. So none of us is to be blamed for our shortcomings. Runaway Realization, pg. 170

Relative vs. Absolute Truth I’m watching Leo’s latest video Relative vs. Absolute truth. I always like to see if Leo’s Teaching meshes with that of The Diamond Approach. It usually does. Quite often they mesh pretty well. Because Absolute Truth has a listing of excerpts in the glossary, this would be a good time to see if there are any discrepancies. I haven’t found any. If anyone does find discrepancies, let us know. Arising of Relative Truth is Dependent Upon and in Response to One’s Personal History and the Present Situation The kind of objective truth that I have just described is not what is usually called ultimate truth in most spiritual traditions. But in our approach, when we talk about finding the truth, we include this kind of truth. I call it relative truth. By relative I don’t mean that different people will experience the same phenomenon differently. For example, what I feel as sadness, another person will not feel as hatred; if another person feels what I’m feeling, he or she will feel sad. It is relative truth because its arising is dependent upon and in response to one’s personal history and the present situation. It is the truth we find in the conventional dimension of experience. So, in the previous example, the sadness is an objective phenomenon, but it is dependent on my present experience, in the sense that it arises in response to specific conditions of this time and place. As those conditions change, the truth will change, which makes it relative. Furthermore, another person will likely have another phenomenon or feeling under similar circumstances, because each person’s experience is dependent on personal predispositions and history. It is easy to see this when we look at percepts such as sadness, anger, or love. These simple percepts always arise embedded in specific circumstances, and they are easy to agree upon as being objective truth. The same is true of actions, reactions, and behaviors; it’s easy to see what an angry reaction or a loving response is, for example. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 345 At the Beginning of Inquiry, what You are Exploring is Relative Truth The exact nature of basic knowledge can be understood more precisely when we consider essential experience. At the beginning of inquiry, what you are exploring is relative truth, the truth of conventional experience. In the territory of relative truth, the fact that whatever you are experiencing is basic knowledge is not strikingly obvious yet. You do experience sadness and sensations, but you are still not recognizing those perceptions as knowledge, or knowingness, because of the dichotomy of observer and observed. Knowledge is still seen as the meaning or insight that you discern from your immediate perceptions. You believe that it is something added to the simple perception. Thus in conventional experience, when you see some relative truth, you end up with insights, and the content of those insights is considered to be knowledge. At some point, however, you come to the recognition of what we call “essential truth.” Essential truth is not an insight about something but the apprehending of the immediate reality of the moment. This immediate reality is presence—the quality of beingness—as when one is experiencing an essential aspect, such as Compassion or Strength. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 80 The Fact of What is Happening The first type or level of truth that we encounter is what we call relative truth. Relative truth is the fact of what is happening, and we call it “relative” because it is specific to the person, the situation, and the time in which the experience is taking place; this means it is constantly changing. For example, the relative truth right now is that you are sitting reading this book, and a while ago the truth was that you were doing something else. The relative truth depends on the situation, and tells us the facts of what is happening now. These truths are the most obvious ones, and are the points of departure for contacting a deeper level of truth. If you inquire more deeply into the relative truth of a situation, you will find that the psychodynamic and existential bases of it begin to reveal themselves. Then, at some point, you might start to experience what we call the essential truth, which is the presence of Essence itself. Facets of Unity, pg. 75 Quotes about Absolute Truth Absolute Truth is Non-Spatial We need to remember that the absolute truth is non-spatial, and hence its inseparability from manifestation inevitably means coemergence. It is inseparable from any of its manifestations and therefore absolutely coemergent with all the manifest dimensions. It pervades everything so completely that there is no region, horizontal or vertical, where it does not reach. In fact, it is this understanding that led us to recognize, in chapter 21, that there is only the absolute. For if it pervades everything absolutely, then there is no region where it does not exist. If anything is not it, then it does not reach there, does not pervade it yet. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 438 Every Aspect, Even those of the Nonconceptual Reality and the Absolute Truth is Integrated Through Successive Steps The perspective we follow in this book is that the human being is born with many and various potentials. The more he actualizes these potentials the more he develops and matures. This process of maturation is the realization of his potentials. Most important of these potentials is Being, with all its aspects and dimensions. Each aspect, even those of the Nonconceptual Reality and the Absolute Truth, is integrated through successive steps: the discovery of the aspect of Being, the permanent realization of this aspect, and the actualization of the aspect, meaning the complete integration of it in one’s human life. Any of these steps can be termed enlightenment. However, each one of them involves the working through of some segment of ego, i.e., complete metabolism of it. This working through can appear as a process or as a sudden realization. Furthermore, the human potential cannot be encompassed by the imagination, for it is ultimately beyond conceptualization. Hence it is not possible to imagine something like the realization and actualization of all human potentials. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 184 Self-realization of the Absolute Truth of Being The student may also come to understand that the love might be passionate and consuming, sweet and heavenly, but even that will tend to separate her somewhat from her beloved, for it relates her to it instead of totally disappearing into it. This only deepens her love to the point of totally annihilating all self-recognition. This precipitates the self-realization of the absolute truth of Being, where she becomes one with this dazzling mystery, totally identified with this luminous, crystal black vastness. The student realizes at this point that she is infinite and boundless, a vastness that has no end. It is as if she becomes the vastness of intergalactic space, seeing that this absolute blackness has a crystalline purity and clarity which make the blackness shimmer and glitter with indescribable brilliance. Her mind explodes into absolute clarity and brilliance, her heart a vastness of annihilating intimacy and bliss, and her body a shimmering which is the appearance of the totality of the universe. The Point of Existence, pg. 423 The Absolute is the Absolute and Final Truth of the Soul and Everything Else The aspect of Truth, for example, functions in helping the soul to discriminate between truth and falsehood, and hence guides her in her life and development towards greater and deeper truth. The deepening experience of Truth opens the soul to the ultimate truth, which is revealed to be the Absolute. In other words, the aspect of Truth reveals itself ultimately to be simply the manifestation of an implicit perfection inherent in the Absolute: The Absolute is absolute Truth. It is the absolute and final truth of the soul and everything else. Therefore, the aspect of Truth functions to provide the soul with the capacity of discrimination necessary for her life and development in the world, but also, and at the same time as it does that, it connects her with the Absolute, revealing it as her ultimate truth. The Point of Existence, pg. 441 The Absolute Truth of Being is Absolute Existence which is, at the Same Time, Absolute Absence of Any Weight or Substance She recognizes that it feels mysterious because she cannot determine its nature, which is absolutely indeterminable. She feels total solidity, a crystalline diamond solidity, but at the same time recognizes that she is absolutely nothing, that she is absence itself. The absolute truth of Being is absolute existence which is at the same time absolute absence. It is the source and essence of everything, but at the same time it is total openness, an absolute absence of any weight or substance. The fact that it is absolute nonexistence gives it its annihilating power. The self feels annihilated because it discovers that its absolute essence is total absence. There is actually no annihilation, only the realization of the selflessness of Being, whose absolute essence is totally ungraspable, completely beyond definition. This indeterminacy is experienced as a paradox of being and nonbeing, existence and nonexistence, neither and not neither. The Point of Existence, pg. 423 The Transition From Pure Consciousness to Absolute Truth is a Spontaneous Process. You Just let Yourself Be We each require different lengths of time to dissolve the habit of assumption and the belief in concepts. Some concepts are easier to abandon than others. But the fundamental idea we have to see through is the concept of being a separate entity. Once that goes, everything else becomes easier. You realize little by little that you don’t experience yourself as a separate person. Although you behave as a person and you do things as a person, you don’t feel that way. The transition from pure consciousness to the absolute truth is a spontaneous process. You just let yourself be. Then the darkness encroaches upon you little by little and you get eaten up. That’s probably why people have so many fears about being eaten up and swallowed whole. Ultimately, we will be consumed. From this perspective, the many things that people say about giving, loving, serving, and sacrificing mean seeing through the entity and all of its attachments. What you surrender is your mind. Being a giving person means not holding on to an entity. Surrender means losing the belief that you are an entity. Service means that being an entity is not the end. All of these are conceptual ways to approach the reality. But, in a sense, the reality cannot be approached, because the moment you approach it, you are already dealing in concepts. You are already taking yourself to be something approaching something else. Reality doesn’t really work that way. Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 178 When You Realize the Absolute Truth You Realize that Everything is the Truth When I say that our orientation is to follow truth all the way to the Ultimate Truth, I mean that the inner journey transcends life and death. When we talk about the ultimate or absolute truth, we don’t mean some kind of mysterious thing someplace. In the beginning it might appear that the truth is some kind of distant, mysterious, unknowable thing, maybe at the depth of your heart or at the center of the universe. But the truth is everywhere and is everything. When you realize the absolute truth, you realize everything is the truth. You cannot see that until you realize the Absolute, its reality and its purity. Then you realize there is nothing else. You forget about spiritual experience. You are not spiritual anymore. You become this-worldly instead of otherworldly. You realize that the world is the Absolute. Everything you see is the spirit, the Absolute. There is nothing else. Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 150

My I Ching reading today just had one changing line in Hexagram 33. Line 4

I’ve copied and pasted below some interesting comments from Osho regarding the Science of Idiotism. Osho on Gurdjieff's Science of Idiotism Gurdjieff certainly forced people to drink, but only the people who were against alcohol. He used to make toasts every night for all the kinds of idiots in the world. He had twenty-one categories of idiots. I don′t know to which category you would belong, but you must belong to some category. Unless you are awakened you are bound to belong to some category or other. An idiot is a person who is trying to find joy where joy does not exist at all, who is trying to search for something which he has never lost in the first place. The enlightened person is one who has looked into his being before searching for anything anywhere else. It is better to look in your own house. He has looked in and has found it there. Now his search has disappeared. The person who is interested in alcohol must be living in misery, in a kind of suffering. That′s why he wants somehow to forget it all. Alcohol is nothing but a chemical strategy to forget your miseries, anxieties, your problems, to forget yourself. My whole effort here is to help you to remember yourself - and you want to forget yourself. By forgetting yourself you will be creating more and more hell for yourself and for others. Remember, rather, remember yourself. My methods are different from George Gurdjieff′s. I am not in favor of any alcoholic beverages. I am not in favor of any psychedelic drugs either, because they all create illusory worlds for you and they all are distractions. They make you more and more oblivious of your own being, unaware of your own self. My work is based in awareness. The word ′awareness′ is the golden key here, the master key. You have to learn to be more aware. Howsoever painful it is in the beginning, be more aware, because it is by becoming more aware that one day you will become part of the celebration of the whole. Aes Dhammo Sanantano - this is the eternal inexhaustible law. taken from https://www.satrakshita.com/osho_on_the_science_of_idiotism.htm More here about the Science of Idiotism from the same website - https://www.satrakshita.com/the_science_of_idiotism.htm There are several discrepancies among those who are brave or foolish enough to offer ideas or facts about the Science of Idiotism. I’m still of the opinion that Bruno Martin’s book - The Realized Idiot - offers the most complete view of any one work.

Likewise, @tsuki Thanks for stopping by,,,

I’m just not relationship material I found a degree of peace in giving up the idea of having a relationship with a significant other. I’m content being single and to be honest, I’m too selfish to be in a relationship. I’ve lived alone too long. I like the freedom that comes with living alone. After my last relationship ended about 5 or 6 years ago I decided I wouldn’t put another woman through the misery of being in a relationship with me. Do I have second thoughts at times? Sure,,, I guess I’m a proponent of never say never. But deciding or realizing I didn’t have to be married or in a committed relationship to be happy has saved me a lot of worry. So I’m content being a loner and a introvert and a hermit. I don’t like public speaking and I’m ok with that too. I think I’m a person of empathy but on the other hand I care less and less about what other people think of me. In the past I was prone to being a doormat for others or at least worrying what other people’s thoughts were about me. I didn’t realize how insecure I was. It feels good to have put a lot of those insecurities behind me. I find that the old saying is so true that finding or having peace is an inside job. No one can do it for you.

I got turned off from country music years ago when I saw so many country music artists overdoing it with putting a ‘countrified twang’ in their voice. A good many of them just appeared artificial to me. The group Alabama always seemed authentic to me. They put out some mellow yet good tunes,,,

A.H. Almaas/the Diamond Approach/ Ridhwan School has only put out a few short clips until recently. I’ve been encountering clips with some excerpts in the glossary more and more. A few days ago they released several short clips on YouTube. A few are just book promotions. Some may find them interesting nonetheless.

I killed this copperhead in my backyard yesterday. Usually I’ll always leave non poisonous snakes alone. Especially King snakes but not one like this. My sister was bitten by a copperhead when she was about 15 and she almost lost her leg. I think she was in the hospital for nearly a week. One reason I have no mercy towards any poisonous snakes I encounter close to my house. I always get a case of the heebie jeebies for the rest of the day whenever I have an encounter like this one. Cottonmouths are probably the kind of venomous snakes that I dislike the most because they can get huge and also aggressive. I’ve seen cottonmouths that were close to 6 feet in length and as big around as the calf muscle in a persons lower leg. They have a strong smell about them as well. Copperheads have their own distinct smell but they’re not as pungent as Cottonmouths.

i like the term transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart used sometimes. The "cultural consensus trance" Within that I see a lot of people in SD Orange level and their priority is in materialism. Chasing the dollars and going after the goodies of the world

Strength Comes A Little Later by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen You might think it takes a lot of strength to do the things I ask you to do – like being assertive, or accepting life the way it comes to you, or changing your angry and fearful thoughts into loving ones, or deciding to believe that God is really with you and within you. But these things don’t require strength; they build strength. These things are strength giving. What is required are simply the ‘want to’ and the ‘willingness to.’ Being human, you will think it’s scary and risky. You will experience feelings of fear and guilt as you proceed to make these changes. But only because fear and guilt are habits of yours – habits that you’ve carried with you for perhaps far too long. I encourage you to hang in there. The fear and guilt and other negatives will drop away. What you’ll discover are their replacements. You will see your inner strength building. You will find your ability to be much more of your true and worthy inner self.

This is more of a rant to be honest,,,, Fundamentalist Christianity amounts to a heartbreaking stupidity essentially being as Yogananda termed it. "Little more than the practice of " Jesusism" and "Churchianity", One reason Is the refusal of those to have an honest look at what was perpetrated by the Roman government's influence in manipulating many of the early Christian texts such as what occurred in the Council of Nicaea around 325 AD. Those who take the dogma handed down and accept it as a belief are doing them selves a grave disservice by simply perpetuating simply no other than a vested interests in knee high bullshit. What sense is there in an Anthropomorphic God the father scapegoating his son in a horrific sacrifice and torture because he made a snafu when he’s supposedly created us yahoo’s. I do give credence to the idea that there was an historical Jesus though who did carry out an act for demonstrating a much needed lesson for the evolution in consciousness for the betterment of mankind. That of mercy towards others and overlooking of grievances or forgiveness. But do you think this highly conscious being actually wants to be worshiped as a sort of idol? In my mind Jesus wants for all of us to be gifted with the kind of understanding whereby we can see though the ignorance and violence of those who still get caught in its grip. I have to admit that I’m still one of them but I keep on trying as best as I can. From Maurice Nicoll- THE LAW OF THE PENDULUM “Our moods are all hung on to pendulums. We should not trust them. Unfortunately, we identify with them. We take them as ourselves. We say: ‘I feel,’ ‘I think,’ and so on. We forget that ‘Real I’ is in the centre of the pendulum-swing, and we allow ourselves to swing between ex- citement and dejection, between enthusiasm and depression, between over-valuation and under-valuation, between conceit and humility, and so on, endlessly. In all this there is no centre of gravity.” V. 1, pp. 328-9 THE FEELING OF NOTHINGNESS “When the Work says that a man must come to realize his own nothingness before he can be re-born, it does not mean that he must humble himself and so on, but that he must by long self-observation actually begin to realize that he is nothing and that there is no such person as himself. The object of this is to get into a position, psycho- logically speaking, between the opposites...Why is it so important to get somewhere into the centre of the pendulum and not swing to and fro? Because here, between the opposites, lie all the possibilities of growth. Here influences from higher levels can reach us. Here, in this place where one can feel one’s own nothingness (and where one is therefore free from contradictions), influences and meanings com- ing from higher centres, which have no contradictions, can be felt. Not regarding yourself as good or bad, not priding yourself on being just or otherwise, not thinking you are well-treated or badly-treated, not being caught by either movement through identifying, you come into this mid-position. This is not easy! With personality active, it is impossible.” V. 1, p. 329 INTERNAL PHARISEES “They read about the Pharisees and Christ’s continual condemnation of them, but they do not see that it applies to themselves—to their own False Personality. The Pharisee in you is your False Personality; it is always pretending to be what it is not.” V. 3, p. 916 CHANGE OF MIND “The mind must change before the rest of the man can change. This is the same teaching as in the Gospels where it is said a man must first repent which really means in the Greek, change his mind. To change one’s mind means to think in a new way. But, to think in a new way, one requires to have new ideas and new knowledge.” V. 2, p. 430 CHANGE OF MIND II “Now Man, a self-developing organism by creation, does not realize how much he owes by remaining asleep in life. He thinks he is owed. Thinking sensually, he must. This attitude needs to be reversed. It cannot be except by ideas that bring about metanoia—that is, change of mind...Now when a man in the Work begins to realize how much he owes by his life of sleep and yet can have it cancelled, he ceases to preoccupy himself daily with what he believes others owe him.” V. 5, pp. 1649-50

Thank you for your well thought out response. I agree very much with what you’ve written. In ancient Egyptian or maybe it was another Mediterranean culture for a while there was a time when there was a martifocal culture in which they pretty much ruled the culture. What I say next may cause an uproar but I’m not meaning to do so. I see that women are much more relational to a great extent and romantic relationships of a sort between woman seems quite natural and men of various dispositions can sometimes be a complimentary aspects to such relationships. This idea will fly in the face and probably cause an upset among those of a conservative mindset, to say the least.. IDK it’s just an imaginative conjecture that I’ve had concerning the possible evolution of the relationships between men and women sometime in the future. maybe what got me considering such a senecio was a remark made my cousins wife in that in her view women in general are only about two mixed drinks away from having a same sex experience with another women. I also know this most likely is something that doesn’t apply to all women. I hope this somewhat radical idea didn’t offend .