Zigzag Idiot

First let me say that I'm not in opposition to anyone here but I've had a similar phenomena for roughly 12 years. It has been something which comes and goes. When I took up a Centering Prayer meditation practice in 2017 it became more persistent and seems to correlate with when my state becomes closer to the state of nonconceptual awareness. Also another subtle phenomena often comes into play more whenever this happens. Hameed Almaas gives an explanation for this, possibly.. In the quote I use of his, the phrase of the Diamond Guidance is used in explaining this. Long story made short, the Diamond Guidance is simply another name for the Holy Spirit so this may be a little confusing. I won't get into the reason for him more or less interchanging these phrases. I also need to say what I've just said isn't 100% accurate but if you hold these things loosely in the category of possibilities, over time the exactitudes may fall into place. Maybe not,, You can be the one to eventually decide. But the phenomena definitely has a very subtle throb or pulse to it, in the forehead. Opening of the Forehead by the Diamond Guidance Usually the Diamond Guidance operates as a presence in the center of the forehead. When it arises in support of discrimination and understanding, we become aware of an expansion as space opens up in the forehead. With that expansion comes a sense of peacefulness; the Black aspect at the center of the forehead opens and we feel stillness and spaciousness. When the Diamond Guidance arises in this peacefulness, we feel a delicate presence, a pulsating energy that possesses a sense of clarity and transparency, an intelligence, an illumination. This delicate, pulsing, breathing presence appears as understanding, as insight, as intuition. As the forehead opens, we feel the Diamond Guidance as a tingling, an energetic throbbing—but very delicate, very soft, very subtle. If we are not attuned, we might dismiss it as just a physical twitch. Or if there is a lot of blockage, as is often the case in the early stages of our development, the diamond might feel hard. Due to the blockage, it can't get through, so it feels almost like a rock. But if we are relaxed and open, we feel it as a softness, a delicacy. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 226 https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/forehead This is just one of six quotes from this page. If you think this has something to do with what you have going on, you can dig more into his Teachings just by looking into these phrases you encounter in the Glossary. Maybe read one of his books. His book Spacecruiser Inquiry may be the most relevant having to do with this phenomena.

@diamondpenguin I appreciate your assessment. ??‍♂️

The raising of consciousness should maybe also concern giving a fair hearing to voices of reason. Those which counteract the highminded guilt trippers on the left which tend to mostly just outrage the more seemingly practical minded identified with Orange worldviews. Those in Orange who are constantly triggered by the out of touch bleeding hearts found so often entrenched in SD Green. I don't mean to dramatize or convey cynicism in saying this. Both sides have valid points and each could use more informed, diplomatic representatives to find the common ground. The fantasies promoted by Disney animations that anthropomorphize animals are perhaps a case in point which confuse so many and create an unnecessary sharp divide. I admit my languaging here is somewhat biased against the left. This admission is given to hopefully add balance and forego editing what I've expressed. I tend to side with the bleeding hearts just as often if not more than I do those of the Orange pov. of which I'm out of and perhaps more familiar with. Please, speak your mind,,,

AH Almaas from 1986,,, "Here's looking at you kid",,,,

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@seeking_brilliance Good idea,,,

@Alex bAlex I saw after the fact, you were quoting song lyrics,,, Re:So it's a drug like a lie and meditation like truth? Doesnt it seem in general that everyone lies about their meditation practice but they tell the truth about a lot of things when they're unbondried under the influence of drugs?

Mdma is the pure substance. It's crystalline in nature, like lsd but it's categorized as a stimulant. Extasy and Molly are slang for a combination peddled which can vary with a mixture of amphetamine included in it If I'm not mistaken.

Insight seems to be synonymous with understanding. In the Fourth Way, it is said that understanding is achieved through a combination of work on knowledge and work on Being. I'm not sure where to put a thread for the Fourth Way. I guess I could in with the Journals. Any opinions from the Moderators?

I believe there is probably a good percentage of Actualizers who, if they were just to settle in to reading 'The Commentaries ' will begin to actually enjoy how Nicoll expresses himself in these ideas. Those who have a Christian background and were confused and disappointed with the fundamentalists literal interpretation of the Bible may find Maurice Nicoll's book THE NEW MAN very interesting. His writings have helped me to reconcile the disparities in my mind of what Christianity actually represents. Below is just a little sample to hint at what it offers. I have yet to read his book THE MARK. THE NEW MAN AN INTERPRETATION OF SOME PARABLES AND MIRACLES OF CHRIST by MAURICE NICOLL ALL sacred writings contain an outer and an inner meaning. Behind the literal words lies another range of meaning, another form of knowledge. According to an old−age tradition, Man once was in touch with this inner knowledge and inner meaning. There are many stories in the Old Testament which convey another knowledge, a meaning quite different from the literal sense of the words. The story of the Ark, the story of Pharaoh's butler and baker, the story of the Tower of Babel, the story of Jacob and Esau and the mess of pottage, and many others, contain an inner psychological meaning far removed from their literal level of meaning. And in the Gospels the parable is used in a similar way. Many parables are used in the Gospels. As they stand, taken in the literal meaning of the words, they refer apparently to vineyards, to householders, to stewards, to spendthrift sons, to oil, to water and to wine, to seeds and sowers and soil, and many other things. This is their literal level of meaning. The language of parables is difficult to understand just as is, in general, the language of all sacred writings. Taken on the level of literal understanding, both the Old and New Testaments are full not only of contradictions but of cruel and repulsive meaning. ,,,,,, In the psychological teaching of the Gospels, a man is not taken as what he appears to be, but as what he most deeply is. This is one reason why Christ attacked the Pharisees. For they were appearances. They appeared to be good, just, religious, and so on. In attacking the Pharisees, he was attacking that side of a man that pretends, that keeps up appearances for the sake of outer merit, fear, praise, the man who in himself is perhaps even rotten. The Pharisee, psychologically understood, is the outer side of a man who pretends to be good, virtuous, and so on. It is that side of yourself. This is the Pharisee in every man and this is the psychological meaning of Pharisee. Everything said in the Gospels, whether represented in the form of parable, miracle or discourse, has a psychological meaning, apart from the literal sense of the words. Therefore the psychological meaning of the Pharisees refers, not to certain people who lived long ago, but to oneself now—to the Pharisee in oneself, to the insincere person in oneself, who, of course, cannot receive any real and genuine psychological teaching without turning it into an occasion for merit, praise and award. Later on we will study the meaning of the Pharisee in oneself more fully. ,,,,,,

I referred to it earlier in Christian Resources Today I found the good copy. Thought I should give it, it's own space. 1400 pages condensed into 130 pages. Many good quotes here. https://inner-world-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Gems_of_Wisdom.pdf Maurice Nicoll UNCRITICAL SELF-OBSERVATION “Remember that it is said that self-observation must be uncritical. You do not observe yourself in order to criticize yourself. If you do so it will at once stop self-observation and lead to internal considering. . . . In self-observation we do not try to analyze—i.e. find the causes and origins of different ‘I’s in us—but seek only to become conscious of them.” V. 2, p. 560, 571 UNCRITICAL II “The Observing ‘I’ in the sense of the Work does not take sides with anything. It merely records what you are doing, what you are saying, at different moments, through the action of different ‘I’s, and does not say that this is better or this is worse. Observing ‘I’ is not shocked by anything. It is not a kind of Grandmamma or Grandpapa in you, but is quite pure and simple...It will have its own uncritical, gentle memory of all the different sides of you... We have to acknowledge and accept all sides of ourselves, because only through the acknowl- edgement, the acceptance, the consciousness of all sides of ourselves can we advance at all.” V. 2, p. 722, 724 THE VALUE OF SELF-OBSERVATION III “Self-Observation clears a space in your mind so that you can see things coming in and going out. If the energy which was about to go into a negative emotion is prevented from doing so, it may pass on and may create a moment of Self-Remembering. All this means that you have brought the Work up to the point of incoming impressions.” V. 1, p. 199 From page 15 of https://inner-world-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Gems_of_Wisdom.pdf

@fridjonk Thanks, Bud.? It was a fun day with some rich experiences despite it raining heavy all day. I slept like a rock last night. I appreciate the tip and I understand In theory about the cold shower but with the hot water valve right there handy, I seem unable to force myself to do that. Kind of like with people who Sky dive,,, Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane? ?? There are certain mountain creeks around where I live that are always ice cold which I use for shock therapy, though. ?. Maybe one day I'll be able to make my hand turn that hot water valve off at home.

Gurdjieffs magnum opus deals extensively with the history of Atlantis and how it's remnants after what he called the second Transalpanian perturbation became the seed for the ancient Egyptian civilization. There is world full of students of The Tales that are more scholarly than I am. Why no one is extrapolating more and making a deal out of this, ,, I don't know? Graham Hancock does, I guess but his overall interests makes his contributions by their nature obviously spread thin. But what he's referring to here, I believe is a correlation and perhaps a complementary confirmation ,,, which is being unraveled with increasing speed. It seems maybe the tide is beginning to turn in how this is all being viewed by the majority with the the more conventional view,, maybe,, In "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" Gurdjieff spoke of the existence of the earths specific very small second moon ( which then later in the early seventies was declared as a fact by modern Astronomers and scientist. My expression of 'the facts' about this is very loosely gathered,,,in the spur of the moment,, A little bit of text from Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson “The point is that when the second Transapalnian perturbation occurred to that ill-fated planet, then, besides its chief continent Atlantis, many other large and small terra firmas entered within the planet and, in their place, new terra firmas appeared on the surface of the planet. “These displacements of the parts of the common presence of that ill-fated planet then continued for several days, with repeated planetary tremors and with such manifestations as could not fail to evoke terror in the consciousness and feelings of beings of every kind.

Wow! I mean!! I felt an increase in cranial pressure from just watching. This guy deserves a day off with pay. Got introduced to these on the forum last year. They're starting to get their hooks into me.

This whole notion of planning a psychedelic trip is for the birds. My best trips are always the spontaneous ones. That seems to be the rule for me. I've had guests for a couple of days and I spontaneously began a trip with 2 -250ug gel tabs at about 3:00am this morning. I topped it off mid morning with 3- 175ug blotter tabs. One of my guests whipped up some spicy hot chili with both Cayenne and jalapeño peppers in it about sunrise. I learned my lesson for good this time. Does not jive with hypersensitive belly center and body chemistry on Lsd. I had to take 3 hot steaming showers to offset what I call a case of the "Chiquaqua lsd jitter shivers". It a condition that involves sweating and then shivering while being kinda antsy and fidgety like a hyperactive mean little Chiquaqua dog. It sounds worse than it actually feels. It's become almost standard in my last few trips which seem to have tapered off in frequency compared to last year. Meanwhile, 12 hours later in regards to the chili, I still don't trust my farts. It's been a nice even comedown this afternoon. One of my guests are comfortable enough with themselves that I feel free to express whatever my inner Six year old decides to comment on. My last 2 trips I've experienced being different forms as a bird of Prey. The air becomes suffused with fine silky energetic filaments with a definite purple hue to it. I feel into others innerspace. I don't do it. It just happens if I get out of the way. I may elaborate on this more sometime. A lot of people don't feel at home with lsd. In my reaquaintence with this substance from my youth. With age, I find it's completely different. There's a loss of personal boundaries and a great reduction in fear overall. I become childlike in expression. I'm a believer in good stout doses that overwhelms psychologically. No room at all for resistance of what's coming on. It completely washes over. With lighter doses, we question and are more prone to doubt ourselves which can unnecessarily get the ball rolling in the wrong kind of way creating negative feedback loops. This is not a substance for people with large areas of untouched and completely unconscious shadow material. If you're not fairly comfortable with yourself in being open with kindred spirits,, maybe you should pause and honestly reassess if this is what you need to do,, No matter your opinion of Robert Plant. He always been a free spirit and as a performer in front of thousands he sets a high standard in embodying creative abandon and fearlessness. IMO, it gives him his natural authentic clout that's truly his own. There's something creative and affirming about the spirit of cutting loose your inner hippy with people you feel comfortable with as kindred spirits.

Today was my #53 birthday I think. It was a very eventful day. I won't even attempt to describe or summarize it. I just need to chill out for a second and listen to some hippy music. Sometimes with a few deep breaths, things begin to fall into place and then begin to unfold in someway.

A. H. Almaas Cynthia Bourgeault Ocke de Boer Ted Nottingham George Gurdjieff P. D. Ouspensky Maurice Nicoll Matt Kahn Chogyam Trungpa Robert S. DeRopp Matt Kahn Carol Anthony Jean Houston Arnold Keyserling Leo Gura Stan Grof Charles Tart Ahilesh Ayyar Ken Carey Marianne Williamson David Hawkins Rodney Colin Bruno Martin J. G. Bennett Red Hawk Jack Kornfield Brad Warner

When I've attempted direct communication with you in the present it feels like you suddenly draw back. I've stated my predisposition for not really wanting to aim for a long term intimate relationship. I confessed my track record wasn't so good in that regard in terms of being relationship material. I'm conditioned very much to living the single life. Therefore don't waste time on me if that's what your mind is ultimately set on. I said, "Let's be friends". The world will unfold however it unfolds. I admit that there has been another who I couldn't help but be intrigued by. When I shared what I just shared here. It was definitely taken in another way. To say I was scorned upon would be putting it lightly. I really hated how that happened. I kept trying to make light of things in an indirect way but it seemed to only make things worse. Don't think that this isn't being noticed by quite a few. Most would die from embarrassment if they actually saw how unknowingly transparent we all are to the rest of the world and that we often completely give ourselves away In many different ways while denying the reality of this phenomena. All of us are Idiots of one kind or another and I don't claim innocence. Knowing without a doubt how I can often just act like a dick. I don't know what else to say for now other than the title to that old song from the 80's - Don't Worry be Happy.

A Path to Knowledge by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2020 Dr. Jim Rosen Your religion, be it an organized church or personal religious convictions or your way of life, is not knowledge itself. But it does provide you with a pathway to knowledge. We ought not to assume that anybody here has already reached it. If so, they wouldn’t be here. Even the highest teachers among us are also learners and students. Everything that happens in your life is a potential lesson – an opportunity to get closer to knowledge. How you respond to these things that happen in your life create either a step forward, a step back, or keep you where you are. Your choices determine your learning. Your choices are your learning. You can accept your path and walk it, or you can deny your path. But you cannot avoid your path forever. It’s been given to you, and you cannot make it go away. But you can acknowledge it and you can embrace it. And peace will come to your mind when you let go and accept the plan for your path to knowledge. ———————-/———- Jim’s message this week reminds of that phrase - ‘Whatever it is you resist will persist’. There’s a corollary phrase in the Fourth Way having to do with the Law of Three- ‘The more you oppose 2nd force, the stronger it grows.‘

I took this short test yesterday. https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test My personality was assessed as being an INFP-T. The T on the end means that I'm a turbulent mediator as opposed to an assertive mediator type with this particular test. A few weeks ago in a short test, I was assessed as an INTP. The first test I took was well over a year ago which I kinda hurried through. In it I was assessed as an ISFJ. In the past I arrogantly dismissed MBTI as being just conventional malarkey. This attitude though is consistent with a former typology I've studied which reveals my distrust in conventional authority also having an overcompensating quality with things I'm engaged in. What really began to change my mind was reading other people's assessments and articulation of MBTI types. These are assessments by both educated and layperson enthusiasts who have a natural draw to typologies and a gift for using it and definitely doesn't include everyone with this interest. I plan to go deeper into this study and perhaps mesh it with the other typologies I've studied which has kinda been my predisposed tendency.

I thought this thread deserved a bump. If nothing else than its having a link to the condensed book - Gems Of Wisdom Nicoll was born at the manse in Kelso, Scotland, the son of William Robertson Nicoll, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He studied science at Cambridge University before going to St. Bartholomew's Hospital and then to Vienna, Berlin and Zürich where he became a colleague of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung's psychological revelations and his own work with Jung during this period left a lasting influence on Nicoll as a young man.[1] After his Army Medical Service during the first World War, in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, he returned to England to become a psychiatrist. In 1921 he met Petr Demianovich Ouspensky, a student of G. I. Gurdjieff and he also became a student of Gurdjieff the following year. In 1923, when Gurdjieff closed down his institute, Nicoll joined Ouspensky's group. In 1931 he followed Ouspensky's advice and started his own study groups in England. This was done through a programme of work devoted to passing on the ideas which Nicoll had gathered and passing them on through his talks given weekly to his own study groups. Many of these talks were recorded verbatim and documented in a six-volume series of texts compiled in his book series Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Taken from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Nicoll If memory serves me right, after World War 1 Nicoll, being aquaintences with Carl Jung, passed up an opportunity to study more with him but chose instead to work with Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. Nicoll was the first and I believe the only person that both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky validated and gave consent to be a Teacher of their Work.

@seeking_brilliance I'm glad to hear that. I'll try to keep my comments here relative to this book study or any comments you may make. The George Gurdjieff thread in High Consciousness Resources will have material that is 100% Fourth Way relevant. Below is a link to a Maurice Nicoll thread I made a while back which contains a link to Gems of Wisdom. I'm open to questions about the Fourth Way anytime in my Journal or private message. Perhaps I should start a thread on the Fourth Way,,,,

A byproduct of Centering Prayer meditation practice is 'objectless awareness' or non-conceptual awareness. To me if feels like a push beyond just plain inner silence. The range of human emotion has quite a spread. In the past I was especially bothered by constant neurotic internal dialogue. Just plain ole inner silence has felt like a blissful state of consciousness after months,, years, maybe where there was just confusion, no real understanding and often, a felt sense of meaninglessness. I'm still not above having negative states of consciousness, accompanied by too much thinking, slight paranoia with mumbles and argumentative jabs from the crew members of my ship of fools. The seas are just a little smoother than in the past. Excuse me please if I'm wearing out the allegory of the ship,,, It's an attempt at lightheartness concerning a serious state of affairs. It didn't really start that way for me but as time goes on, I find more and more depth to it. Maurice Nicoll's 1766 page Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky was so enjoyable to read that when I finished it I read it again just a few months later. This work has been condensed down to 130 Pages called Gems Of Wisdom, and its just one great quote after another. I'm not trying to sell anyone on the Fourth Way but just use what part of this that you find meaningful and leave the rest. I was just going to quote the first and third paragraph but I decided to just leave the 2nd in place even though it uses a specific term that may seem weird to some. Maybe not though. These quotes really seem applicable to the last couple of chapters. SEEING THE OPPOSITES “Try sometimes to see the opposite point of view to that which you hold...If the opposite is genuinely and with effort included in con- sciousness the sphere of consciousness is greatly increased and a number of unpleasant features in us disappear. Our one-sidedness, which causes our over-sensitive reactions and also our totally wrong ways of self-evaluation, is replaced by a broader, fuller consciousness. We can no longer insist we are right nor be cast down when proved to be wrong. We find it more difficult to be petty. In fact, we begin to escape from the prison of ourselves whose bars and gates result from our one-sidedness.” V. 5, p. 1521 THIRD FORCE “The Work teaches that there are three forces in every manifesta- tion. We see only two—if we see as far as that...Third Force lies between the opposites and so we can picture it as the mid-point of the pendulum-swing. If you take the feeling of ‘I’ out of both sides of the pendulum, then you do not feel yourself through the opposites and the feeling of ‘I’ moves to the centre, into nothingness, or, if you pre- fer, into not-somethingness. Here in the middle is the place or state where ‘Real I’ is.” V. 1, pp. 329-30 INNER SILENCE “Different ‘I’s, ranged along the orbit of the swing, wish to say now this and now that, as the light of consciousness touches them, wakes them to momentary life. To a limited extent one may permit them to speak, provided one has a distinct idea that neither side is right. Inner silence means being silent in oneself. It means not taking sides in yourself and so being silent. This is impossible if you identify with every ‘I.’ You may let talk take place on one side or the other, but you observe it and are in yourself silent.” V. 1, p. 334