Zigzag Idiot

Think About Anxiety by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen Think of anxiety on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being completely comfortable and relaxed. Most people can experience a 2,3,4 and still function pretty well and get themselves under control. It is normal to experience this level of anxiety pretty regularly. It’s part of being in human skin. Even an occasional 5 or 6 is a normal human experience. And in this very stressful year, 5’s and 6’s have become more frequent for many people. There is good news here. These normal levels of anxiety are not an indication that you’re falling apart or that something is terribly wrong. They are not a sign of anything awful. So you need not magnify it or “awfulize” it in your mind. In fact, do just the opposite. “Normalize” it. Be aware (and remind yourself as often as needed) that the anxiety is normal and human. This will make it a lot easier to keep your emotions under control. So here is another example where acceptance of what is can go a long way toward easing your life.

It’s kinda lame that I play the same songs over and over.

@Shunyata In pondering your question the following odd experience happened to me at quite a young age. The feeling of love was one of the key components of this really vivid dream. This is an experience I shared here on my journal just shortly after I began it. When I was 7 years old I awoke from a dream and knew without any doubt at all what the world felt like from a girl's perspective. Although being just a prepubescent girl in the dream, there was a nonspecific boy whom I felt great love for. Whenever in the past I've tried relating this dream, it was always twisted by others into a sign of repressed homosexuality. In my local culture there is a lot of polarity thinking. It's either this or that. In spite of the dream, as Ken Wilbur puts it, I'm a hard wired heterosexual. So far as the first love being maybe the only true love, as you phrased it. That just doesn’t ring true with me. My first ‘loves’ were probably more infatuation on my part than anything.

Meditation Two good points I needed to hear as reminders, in this short clip from Hameed Almaas. Anyone new to Zen or practicing Zazen might find some helpful ideas from Zen Master Warner. I’ve enjoyed reading most of his books. He’s been very dedicated but you’ll see no spiritual egotism with this guy, He keeps it real. If not this podcast then maybe another from his channel.

@Flowerfaeiry Great idea for a topic. I think it applies to most everyone at some point who are doing the Work. Robert S. DeRopp thought so as well. In his book that’s considered a classic by many, The Master Game, he identifies this trap in what he called the six catches. I have a photo of his chart of six catches but I’m having trouble uploading it. If I can, I’ll add it later,,,,

Maurice Nicoll has so much good quoteable material. I guess it stands to reason though. His Psychological Commentaries number nearly 2000 pages. This has been distilled down fairly recently to 130 page book called Gems of Wisdom. https://inner-world-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Gems_of_Wisdom.pdf BEING PASSIVE TO REACTIONS “Now let us come back to the meaning of being passive. In the full sense it means being passive to the personality, and this, in turn, means being passive to oneself. Can you be passive to your mechanically arising objections for even five minutes? Well, I advise you to observe how your personality reacts every moment to everyone and everything...Notice when you begin to object inside—notice what reactions arise in you—and try to be passive to them, not to the people who cause them to arise. Is this clear? You must make yourself passive to your own reactions, not to the people you are reacting to.” V. 1, p. 276 JUDGEMENTS “Mechanical criticism of others produces a great many psychologi- cal difficulties in the person who criticizes—that is, wrong ‘I’s which hinder their own inner development and freedom...After a time you will learn that you cannot afford to sleep too much and to talk and act mechanically and let your life be in the hands of wrong ‘I’s.” V. 1, p. 150-1 INNER TALKING “When you come into the Work one of the things that the Work teaches you is to try to stop inner talking because it is very danger- ous...The first thing that we must do in regard to inner talking is to observe it and notice what this inner talking is saying...A great deal of inner talking is connected with self-justifying—namely with the attempt to put yourself in the right. You feel, for example, that some- one has not treated you rightly. This will start off inner talking. . . . Inner talking is never dialogue but is always a monologue. Inner talking is always negative in character.” V. 2, p. 774-5 INNER TALKING II “Now we have to cancel all sense of people owing us anything at all. This is extremely difficult. But it is one of the few things mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Cancel what we owe as we cancel what others owe us.’ When a person allows inner talking to go on and on in him- self he is losing force all the time...When you are in attention your inner talking stops.” V. 2, pp. 775, 777 INNER TALKING III “In this Work you cannot go far with pleasing self-made pictures of your own nobility or value. When you begin to observe yourself deeply enough, these pictures, these fantasies, begin to change. You know that you yourself are just as bad or worse than the other person. Then I am quite sure from my own experience that a great deal of your inner talking will stop. You do not seek to justify yourself.” V. 2, p. 776 49 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.” V. 1, p. 161 BEARING UNPLEASANT MANIFESTATIONS “One sign of Being is the capacity to bear the unpleasant manifestations of others. Why is this a sign of greater Being? The answer is that you cannot do this unless you have seen in yourself what you dislike in others...When you have just criticized someone, go over what you said carefully and apply it to yourself. This neutralizes poison in you.” V. 1, pp. 168, 176 RESPONSIBILITY FOR NEGATIVE STATES “If you are in a negative state, it is always your own fault, from the Work point of view. No matter what happened, what someone said, what someone did, we have to become responsible for our negative states—ourselves. . .When you feel the presence of negative emotions in you, as a foreign substance, as acutely as a stomach-ache, then youwill seek, for your own reasons, to work on yourself and transform your inner state for your own inner health...But this takes many years and requires a certain inner courage, an inner bravery, an inner determination, until something new is born distinct from life.” V. 2, p. 695 ON ‘NOT FIXING’ “As long as you externally consider another person with a view to trying to change him or her—that is, as long as you think the other person should be different—you are not externally considering, but internally considering. The basis of internal considering is that others should be different, and from this comes ‘making accounts’ against others...One thing is quite certain, and that is that the more sincerely we observe ourselves and what is in us, the less smug we shall be. And from this it follows that we shall be less satisfied to think that we know what the other person should be like.” V. 1, pp. 268-9 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

I’m not sure if I do remember. I understand the question but I can also see a gradient of somewhat subtlies hooked to levels of abstract thought. I would probably need to ponder it a for a bit and then communicate in person or at least in video conference. I’ll ponder your question for the time being, though.

No, You’ve come too far,,,

I appreciate @Shunyata ‘s comment on the notion of psychological projection. Also to be truth loving to the extent that he was willing to out himself on a personal experience he had regarding some negative projection. That willingness to admit it and see it fully when shortly after it happened, it’s obvious his frame of awareness expanded as a result of his willingness to observe his own actions objectively. We all project. Every single one of us here. Both negative and positive in nature. I didn’t really comprehend the extensive ness of projection among all of us until my early Forties but more disturbing, the number and the reality of my own projections. I still catch myself projecting something onto others quite regular. I’m not far enough yet the this path of transformation that I’m on that I’m absent of this phenomena. So I have to stay practiced up on this thing of seeing things about myself that are less than flattering and maybe eating crow. On of the payoffs in putting efforts towards objective self observation is a reduction of negative emotions. Even though I’ve been at this awhile and have received a few of these payoffs, on occasion I’m still capable of acting like a prick. It hurts to see these things but I thank God and the Universe that I do see them a times. Science of Idiotism is very helpful in this not so easy work. By returning to Ordinary Idiot and starting again in beginners mind, it suddenly gets a little easier again and the weight is lifted somewhat. I’m happy to be an Idiot. Glossary of Spiritual Wisdom Excerpts about Projection Believing Your Projections To the ego, freedom means being able to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. Because this isn’t often possible, you come to see the universe as constraining you and limiting your freedom. But from the perspective of Holy Freedom, freedom is wanting whatever the universe wants. When you are aligned with the universe, what you want and what is happening are the same thing. This is true freedom. This is why the Idea of Holy Freedom is fundamental to the methodology of the Diamond Approach, in which a basic part of the practice is to be present with whatever happens to be your state. If you react to it, interfere with it, or try to change it, then you can’t see it objectively but only through the screen of your projections. If you don’t see your condition or the situation in its natural state, you will continue believing your projections about it and won’t be able to penetrate its true nature. If you don’t see its true nature, it won’t unfold and expose itself as the Holy Truth that everything is. Fundamental to our understanding is that while you might have projections upon whatever you are experiencing initially, if you don’t interfere with it, the tendency of the universe is to reveal its own nature through your experience. This, of course, requires basic trust. Facets of Unity, pg. 136 Our Projections Determine Many of Our Actions Our projections, of course, determine many of our actions, our feelings, and even our life plans. Paranoia is one of the most well known forms of projection but projection is very prevalent in other forms. Sometimes you project your fear or your jealousy, so that you won’t have to experience them and admit that you yourself are feeling these things… Projection is actually one of the first defensive mechanisms developed in infantile life. Its basis is what is called the “merged state.” The child is in what is called the symbiotic stage, between the ages of three and nine months, when he does not experience himself as separate from his environment. He feels that he and his mother are one thing… However, that early merged state, that state of being the same as the other, remains as the basis of projection. So if you feel angry, you may feel someone else is feeling angry. The child is feeling angry and he doesn’t know his mother is different from him, so he thinks she is feeling angry, or vice versa. So we see how this is the deepest source of projection. Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 118 Positive Projection Happens When You Become More Aware of Your True Nature Positive projection happens when you start becoming more and more aware of your true nature, your Essence. Before this happens, what you know best is your personality, and that’s what you project. After a while, when you start to experience your value, your love, your essential self, your compassion, you begin to project these qualities. All kinds of issues will arise from the unconscious then, barriers against experiencing Essence, which will make you want to project it outside. It’s the same process as falling in love, except that now the expansion is coming from the intentional work. Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 122 Projection of the Superego The negative experiences with the mother gradually coalesce; become one big thing, which is isolated from the positive part of experience. This forms the basis for the superego, for the negative judgments of the superego. You project your superego outside because in the beginning there was no difference then. So now when you experience the negatively merged state, you cannot separate what is real inside from what is real outside, and your preference is to believe it's outside. So you can see that in order to work through your superego you must get all the way down to that pre-verbal, chaotic, hellish, negatively merged state. As you experience this fully, without defending against it, certain essential states will arise to move you through the negativity and the hell. Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 119 Projections of the Positive and Negative Merged States Just as the negative merged state is the basis for the projection of negative aspects of ourselves, the positive merged state forms a basis for our projection of the positive aspects of ourselves. And what is that that but our Essence? The negative merged state is the basis of our personality. It is our personality. The positive merged state is our Essence. However, because of the developmental state of symbiosis, the “dual unity” that happens in childhood, we associate our Essence – along with all the positive qualities of love, value, fulfillment, satisfaction – with the merged state, the positive merging with another. There starts the big search: the search for the perfect merged state with the good mother who will give you love, value, approval, pleasure, satisfaction. Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 120 Three Varieties of Projection Projection, displacing something somewhere else, seeing something that doesn’t exist, is obviously for the purpose of defense. There are generally three levels, or three varieties of projection in relation to the merged state, depending on the depth at which you’re operating, or at which the unconscious is functioning. The first level is the level of the actual merged state itself, when you can’t tell whether it’s you or somebody else, when you experience one big unity, which is all wonderful. That’s when the actual merged state itself is activated. The other person might be participating with you, or might not be. In the merged state, it doesn’t matter… The second aspect, which comes a little bit later with more differentiation and separation, is called projective identification. Instead of being completely merged, what you do in this case is project an aspect of yourself, such as value, onto somebody else. You see that value in someone else and then you want to merge with it. You project it and then you identify with it… The third level is just projection: you don’t identify with the projection, you just project something… you do this whether what is projected is something you want or don’t want. Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 123 We Plaster Our Projections Over All Manifest Forms Recognizing the nonbeingness of Being does not lead to the disappearance of the individual soul; it leads to understanding that the individual soul doesn’t exist the way we usually think it does. Then we discover that emptiness of Being is true not just about the individual self, but also about the perceptions of the individual self. In other words, all that we perceive can be liberated from the ordinary conception of existence as a solid something that is really there. We plaster our beliefs and our projections over all manifest forms, all the world, all the universe that we see. And when the world is free from our ideas about it, we see it in its beingness, we see that everything is a manifestation of beingness in its purity and presence and luminosity. The thoroughgoing understanding of emptiness reveals not only that the world and the individual soul are manifestations of Being, but also that the manifestation of Being doesn’t have the kind of existence we attribute to it. Being, in all its forms, is in complete eternal, inseparable embrace with its eternal partner, nonbeing. When we recognize the intrinsic emptiness of everything, then the beingness recognizes not only that the world is a manifestation of Being, but also that the world is a manifestation of emptiness. We recognize that Being is the radiance of emptiness, and that this radiance has variegated colors and multifaceted forms that we experience as the world and as all the content of our experience. Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 366 We Tend to See What is Best in Us Outside We see here that we not only project our superego outside, we also project our Essence. We tend to see what is best in us outside. That doesn’t happen all the time, of course, but it usually happens when you are in love… People fall in love because if they begin to expand, they start to get close to their Essence; then the unconscious, the personality, gets in the way. It is threatened by getting close to Essence. So you project your Essence outside onto someone else and fall in love with it. What this means is that you still cannot tolerate your own expansion. If you recall back to when you fell in love, it was at the height of some time of feeling good, of expansion. Suddenly, the right person shows up, and you’re in love. Diamond Heart Book One, pg. 121

Just trying to mind my own business and It feels like I’m chest deep in bat shit crazy around here. A lot of projecting going on. I’m not naming any names,,,, The more you stir it the more it stinks kind of thing. If it continues to accelerate I’ll request a moderator to intervene. Theres no need for any of it,,,,

Brings to mind Castaneda- Condensed at this site. https://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/donjuan1.html Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.” ― Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly

I wasn’t calling you immature. Only the first sentence pertained to you and I didn’t identify you. You just outed yourself. Chill out,,,, watch a You tube and try to get some sleep.

@Chance Cunningham I deal with insomnia a bit myself. I posted this poem in my journal recently by one of my favorite philosophers, Arnold Keyserling. Sharing it because I thought it relevant to the title of this thread, Sorrow No one would make the decisive step without sorrow and doubt. But taking that step has nothing to do with sadness. It is shed like the skin of a snake. The darkness is able to generate the right reason, one more difficult, but also better, than the next. But it will not always be so. Some day love will shine upon you. Then sorrow will simply be the undertone of the resulting harmony. The path is there from the very beginning. Sometimes it is easier, sometimes harder. But one thing is essential: the depth emerges from the strength of sorrow. Without sorrow there is no course; without the course the path is not passable. Mourn – not over the self – but over what is yet to be done. Each day brings further sorrows, and eventually you will reach the original cause of sorrow. Then you can finally begin the ascent back. Rejoice in your sorrow, for the darkness will not remain with you much longer.

A friend I recently shared my journal with just told me how phony I am. So I share this opinion with you,,,, Chance and Choice - A Compendium of Ancient and Modern Wisdom Revealing the Meaning and Significance of the Myth of Science. It was co-written by Austrian Philosopher and Professor, Arnold Keyserling -- a student of George Gurdjieff and Ramana Maharishi -- and by Keyserling's student and long time friend, R.C.L., now an attorney in the U.S. From the introduction of Chance and Choice “Wisdom is the ability to live coherently in a chaotic world.”,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,, The Path of Wisdom essentially has four steps: (1) know your body, (2) create your energy body, (3) create your meaning in life, and (4) participate in a global network of friends where your meaning can be fulfilled in history. ,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,, A word of caution here, don't be too intellectual or take yourself too seriously, have fun with this material, play with it as a kind of "glass bead game". People who are too serious are not really mature. http://www.chanceandchoice.com/course-overview/introduction/

I’m still reading Eye of the Heart by Cynthia Bourgeault. It’s about the Causal Realm and our relation to it as well as our potential relation to as she terms it, imaginal causality. Using Gurdjieffs ‘Hydrogens’ and The Ray of Creation I’ve already mentioned that she identifies the ‘Kingdom’ as being World 24. Interesting table she gives here in Her new book. Jim Marion’s Putting on the Mind of Christ has many inspirational passages regarding specific states of consciousness which relate to the causal realm. It seems kind of funny that he places a full non dual state as being above Christ consciousness. I’m getting too many books going at once which I’m prone to do. I’d forgotten Marion’s mention of Yogananda here. I’ve just began a re-read of Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. It’s more than just interesting,,, I feel like a hypocrite reading such high minded books considering that I’m a rather coarse individual. I need all the good influences I can get though.

A few of Bruno Martin’s comments regarding the Science of Idiotism in which #1 - Ordinary Idiot correlates with The Fool of the Tarot.

@Advocate Excuse me for throwing it out there as an absolute truth that you should immediately believe. Sometimes that’s just how my enthusiasm manifests. Youre right in that it is something that sounds far out. Maybe I should possibly categorize it as esoteric in category. Gurdjieff never attributed the knowledge of the enneagram with personality types but he did correlate the enneagram with what he called the law of 3 and the law of octaves aka law of 7. To confuse things even more he sometimes referred to it as the law of nine foldedness. You may find it interesting or maybe not. Have fun though,,, ?

Thanks @MuadDib ? I appreciate the quotes,,,, Learning Your Way Out of a Problem by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen When you want to overcome a problem and you want to grow and learn, you can do it by applying four steps. Your awareness is the first step. You become an observer of yourself; you take notice, and become aware each time the particular problem comes to the surface. The problem may express itself in your emotions (e.g., anxiety, guilt, anger, insecurity), or it may show up as depression and physical symptoms, or it may come out in conflicts with a loved one. The second step isresponsibility. This is where you look in the psychological mirror and realize that the problem belongs to you. You are its rightful owner. While it's not a matter of "blame," responsibility means that the source of the problem is within you. Acceptance comes next. You practice accepting yourself as a whole person. Having the problem doesn't make you bad or unworthy; it just means that you’re human, and the problem is a mistake to be corrected. And now it's time to make a conscious choice, the fourth step. You stay focused on your personal radar screen. When the problem expresses itself, you notice it, and you make the conscious decision and the conscious effort to respond differently. Then each time the problem begins to appear, you have another opportunity to practice what you’re learning.

@Advocate Great Observation you’ve made! You’ve spotted the mi fa gap in the law of Octaves also called the law of seven. It’s one of the most overlooked, deeper truths concerning the enneagram. It dictates why people often enthusiastically undertake aims only to become disinterested after a time and also why under mechanical influences ( just going on autopilot) our lives just tend to go in circles without progressing. Although often overlooked, with some google searches and some digging around, information can be found. http://cwe.hagut.net/the-law-of-seven-or-the-law-of-octave/ http://www.katinkahesselink.net/sufi/G2Enneagram.html https://bepresentfirst.com/the-law-of-seven/ I just randomly gathered these links. You may find a source you like better with a search done on your own.