Zigzag Idiot

Absolutely. Washington’s biography most of all with Lincoln’s, a close second. A good biographer/writer can not only put you inside the subjects head but their heart as well, IME. I haven’t read any other of Ron Chernow’s biographies but I have some of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s. They’re both talented in what they do spending an enormous amount of time researching the slightest details and then composing an engrossing story. Washington was such a responsible and equanimous character. to a remarkable degree. Lincoln as well but spiced more also with a compassionate heart. Being able to get into the hearts and minds of these great men may not have changed my character but knowing about them better than I did before has maybe stretched my conscience in having such real life examples of ordinary men becoming such extraordinary leaders.

This song,,, I can’t get it out of my head,,,

Haven't read Alan Watts "In my own way" though it's got to be good. I'm with you on the other two for sure. I still laugh about a quote of Roosevelt's while he was working cattle in the Dakota's. Word had it that he instructed a couple of other cowboys in the midst of a hectic stampede that they should "hasten forward quickly". lol Besides Roosevelt's biography a fairly recent book titled River of Doubt about his expedition in South America is a real good read. George Washington's biography'', Washington A Life by Ron Chernow I found very interesting despite it's length. In battles he was like a cat with nine lives. And talk about being under stress,,, jeez,, His whole life was nothing but stress. That pretty much goes for lincoln too. Team Of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin is a good one. Movie was good too.

@seeking_brilliance I agree. I like her too. Thanks for posting her songs,

@tsuki Just now I was scanning the posts and realized I projected somewhat. You wrote “essential quality” and I replied misquoting your question with the term essential aspects. Excuse me, I read it as that this morning and pondered it much of the day without rereading the question and catching my mistake.

@Keyhole It would make a cool basket but I bet it would take a long time to get the stink out of it. Did you know that Armadillos are the only other animals besides humans to host the leprosy bacillus. In 2011, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article formally linking the creature to human leprosy cases—people and armadillos tested in the study both shared the same exact strain of the disease.

@tsuki To make sure we’re on the same page. Let me relate my understanding of what essential aspects are or what my usage of the term is. In short, ‘flavors’ of being or maybe flavors of presence. Hence, aspects of being or presence or aspects of essence A couple of excerpts from the Ridhwan glossary to fill in some gaps.= Although Essence is One, the Same Substance, It has Many Varieties, Many Qualities But we must use concepts if we are going to communicate verbally. One important concept that we have been using without clarification is that of essential aspects—that essence has many aspects, not just one quality. As we have seen, essential substance has precise and definite physical characteristics. In fact, it can be described in terms of color, taste, texture, transparency, density, luminosity, viscosity, and so on. Variations in these give rise to different aspects of essence, which have different psychological significance. So although essence is one, the same substance, it has many varieties, many qualities. These are aspects of essence. This is true for both the baby and the adult. The aspect of truth is not the same as the aspect of love, and this is not the same as the aspect of will, and so on. They are all essence, and clearly so for the one who knows, but they are experienced differently and affect us differently. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 78 As the Dynamism Takes the Soul Into new Realms, Our Being Reveals many Pure Qualities which I have Called Essential Aspects As the dynamism takes the soul into new realms, our Being reveals many pure qualities, which I have called essential aspects. It displays the quality of Love, the quality of Clarity, the quality of Strength, the quality of Peace, the quality of Truth, the quality of Contentment, the quality of Spaciousness, the quality of Existence, the quality of Passion, and so on. These qualities are elements from the beyond, from the unseen world, and our conventional wisdom cannot fathom them, can’t really see or discern their meaning, function, or usefulness. So how can we discern what these essential qualities are? We need to recognize what they mean; we need to understand how they are related to our conventional experience and how they can optimize our lives. For this, we need a vehicle of understanding—a source of discrimination and knowledge—that originates from the same or a deeper dimension than the one these qualities come from. The specific guidance that makes this possible is what I call the Diamond Guidance. The Diamond Guidance is itself a pure manifestation of our Being, which is necessary for it to be able to guide us in the essential dimension. Our Being not only displays its richness, it also provides us with the capacity to comprehend, appreciate, and integrate that richness. Without this discrimination, we are only able to approach this richness as candy. We don’t understand the significance of the richness, that it is really part of our inner nature, so we just want more and more of the candy—these things that taste sweet and wonderful but are separate from who we are. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 211 With this usage of the term essential aspects, I don’t see a common ground specific to Rednecks. Other commonalities come to mind though. Blue collar or no collar workers. Before the majority of tractors had cabs, this condition was present among most tractor operators. Also generally, no formal higher education. There are self taught or egg headed nerd rednecks like me, though. When I think of rednecks, in my mind, the southern United States and moreover the rural areas are where rednecks would be most numerous. A cousin of mine returned from a college class one day a few years ago and informed me that redneck was a political term. He was studying to become a lawyer. I think I replied something like yeah, whatever,,,

@Keyhole I’ve heard Coca Cola with all of its acidity makes a fairly decent toilet bowl cleaner! On the subject of ants, Our local pastures have become infested with army ants in the last10 -15 years. I used to see the giant ant mounds in northern Louisiana but like the armadillos they migrated north over time. I’ve heard some refer to the armadillo as a sport model opossum. ?

No problem. I understand. I corrected my post,,,, spray bottle of bleach water.. ?‍♂️?

Get with you later with a possible answer. I’m still pondering that one,,,

Not so. I was expressing myself in hyperbole. I come by it honest on my Mother’s side of the family. If anything, I was alluding to Gladrial in lord of the rings. She was givin the highest honor because she refused the power of the ring. I intuit that universal justice is like that. Maybe not. I’m just full of beans anyway. It was nothing toward you. I was going to say though that I got rid of black mold in my house with just a spray bottle of bleach water. PEACE

Ive always wanted to get a propeller beanie. Maybe just to get a reaction from my redneck friends. I can talk about rednecks because I’m one still. I can’t speak for all rednecks, though. They’re not all belligerent, racist, homophobic, numbskulls. There’s certainly a variety. Some are quite progressive, even downright liberal in their views. I was remembering yesterday how God sometimes allows me to read people’s minds. If I forfeit the use of power, I’m even bestowed the power of putting thoughts into another's mind. It’s that old Jedi mind trick that Barack Obama referred to in jest while at the podium one time.

I read this in the past from Arnold Keyserlings writings,,,, I think Happiness = the perpetual willingness to fall

Whenever one fights or opposes something, it only makes what one is fighting more powerful. In the Fourth Way it’s stated as - To oppose second force increases second force.iME, this is what Red Hawk was getting at, in the quote I put up above. As humans, we have the tendency to either dismiss, explain away, or make excuses for our discontinuity of consciousness. It might be called a change of moods or perhaps the activation of a sub personality, the result of temporary stress, etc.,, Terence McKenna pretty much dismissed the contemporary diagnoses of schizophrenia. In a roundabout way, his view aligns with a core element of the Gurdjieff Teaching. Earlier in this journal I metaphorically labeled myself as a ship of fools. This metaphor I borrowed from Robert Deropp, a biochemist of the early 20th century and student of Ouspensky. He authored a book about the path to higher consciousness and enlightenment called The Master Game which became a classic in the early 1970’s. The Fourth Way teaches that we’re more fractured psychologically than the majority of contemporary psychologists and academia will allow. Transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart coined the phrase “cultural consensus trance” . A beautiful description of the result of the fracturedness prevalent in modern humans which creates the collective ego This element of fracturedness is susinctly delineated in an article written by Ralph Losey called The Problem of the Subtle Sybil effect. http://www.lawsofwisdom.com/course-overview/opening-statement/the-problem-of-the-subtle-sybil-effect/ It’s very difficult to change our habits but it is possible to transform our habits of mechanical behavior over time. It’s why in the Work, it is advised to not try and change ourselves but to just objectively observe. This observation will allow Conscience to awaken through remorse. Remorse of Conscience will make transformation of our mechanical behaviors much more possible than the route of self criticism, blame and guilt. It makes our transformation of lower self and lower chakra energies a conscious endeavor by way of awakened conscience. Awakened conscience is the same in everyone unlike acquired conscience which changes over time and from culture to culture. Awakened conscience is called by some, the intelligence of the universe. Jesus Christ and the Buddha taught non-violence and forgiveness through letting go and not judging or keeping accounts. The path of awakened conscience. By awakening, we leap out of our graves, as Ocke deBoer humorously puts it. Awakened people are not over burdened with false seriousness, they’re light hearted.

Letting my tragic romantic “I”s

Self-Respect is for the Dogs by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen He was really asking about himself when he raised this question during his therapy session. “What is self-respect?” he said. Seeming to dodge the issue, I asked him if he liked dogs. “Yes,” he did. Then I asked him to suppose that he had too many dogs, and that he needed to get rid of a few, how would he do it? Would he shoot them? “No!” came his strong emotional reply. I asked why not. He answered that he had "some tender feelings." What if he didn’t know these dogs? What if they were somebody else’s dogs? More strong feelings surfaced. He couldn’t shoot them, “because they’re living, breathing creatures!” “That is self-respect turned outward,” I said, “now turn that toward yourself. You already have the feelings. It’s a matter of learning to develop them.” “How can I develop them?” he asked. Getting there is not so hard. It just takes a lot of practice. You follow the principle that changes in your thoughts and behaviors always lead to changes in your feelings. So you make the choice to practice thoughts that promote your self-respect. They are called “affirmations” and this is the real purpose of them. You say kind and appreciative things about yourself to yourself. You won’t believe them for a while, but you say them because they are true. And you follow this up with self-respecting, self-loving behaviors. You do lots of small nice kind things for you. Each of these little things (that you really want to do) get you a bit closer to your goal. If you really desire to love and respect yourself, you will practice these thoughts and behaviors. You will walk the way that leads you there. These are choices that you make.

This is a sheet of paper I had on my refrigerator. It’s dirty and stained because it was on there for roughly 15 years. The quote from Lao Tsu speaks for itself. The sentence at the top - ‘Beware of psychic entropy’ -was especially important for me to remember for quite a few years. The two phrases right below it was my reminder of method. This was some knowledge I received out of reading Fourth way material. I found it to be so true that when my attention was dispersed it would get spread thin. But worse than that,, things and people out in the world would grab my attention. The result usually meant that whatever grabbed my attention would mess with me according to whatever it’s nature was. On the other hand, if I remained in control of my attention. I then possessed more will. That’s just one way of saying it. It’s not easy to remain in control of one’s attention with the ability to direct it where chosen. The payoff for me I realized eventually was staying free of psychic entropy. All of this is still relevant for me in the current day but it was my path out of personal hells I would sonetimes find myself in years ago. The term psychic entropy if I remember right was picked out of an essay written by Jonathon Zap. https://zaporacle.com/card/dealing-with-psychic-entropy/#gsc.tab=0 Yeah, there it is. I found it again. ’Content to process shift’ written in the middle of th page was a concept that hit home for me reading one of David Hawkins books. If I were to elaborate on this I would juxtapose content to context. If I can direct my attention away from content and towards context while falling into psychic entropy, It can often keep me out of psychic entropy because it is usually a larger frame of reference. Another trick I found was to put a larger percentage of my attention into my peripheral vision. This has the effect of moving my attention away from content and more into context. I wanted to explain or expand on why I posted those Red Hawk’s quotes the other day Just above. Maybe in a little bit if I don’t fall asleep.

WithIn the Wisdom compendium Chance and Choice in the chapter concerning Chinese wisdom a humorous quote comes to mind. The highest achievement is no longer self-centered. You are in civilization and in spirit, a part of the New Earth in the sign of the DOG Ò Aquarius. You are, like the DOG, completely faithful to your path and to sacred history. You transcend your ego by announcing your truth in society like the ROOSTER without regard to the practical consequences. Not that I’ve transcended my ego but announcing my truth like a rooster without regard to practical consequences. That kind of describes me at times. As I’ve aged it’s become more toned down though.

A poem by Red Hawk

David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D 1927 - 2012 https://veritaspub.com/dr-hawkins/#Biography Summary Hawkins developed a scale of Consciousness through use of Kinesiology (muscle strength testing) Fellow Actualizers, please feel free to leave your favorite Hawkins lecture, article or your own comments about David Hawkins work if you feel it’s appropriate for this particular thread.

Only in recent times has having passion been seen as a good thing. It might be more appropriate for me to suggest that there now seems to be Two usages perhaps. Anyone have thoughts on this? The enneagram, for example is often labeled as having passions listed on it which are opposite of the Virtues. Passion of fear Virtue of Courage Passion of lust. Virtue of innocence passion of anger Virtue of serenity passion of pride Virtue of humility etc.,,,

Some of these are more like documentaries. I looked over all that’s been posted. Excuse me if I’ve overlooked and posted one that already has been listed. People vs The State of Illusion What the Bleep Do We Know Meetings with remarkable Men The Quantum Activist Something Unknown is Doing We Dont Know What Spirit Space

@seeking_brilliance I thought I had read most of your journals but It seems I’ve missed some entries. Sounds interesting for sure. Regarding your astral guide. I happen to have a stethoscope. May have to play around with it some,,, I had to google Tulpa. I had never seen the word before. So,, I guess I’m not and to be honest, I’m going to have to reread it again to try and get it in my understanding. Much appreciated are the kind words and also the light heartedness.

Zz