Search the Community

Ironically I had no plans of continuing this journal. I started a new journal and it got deleted with the data loss. Lately I've been so busy and so energetic that I haven't been writing that much. The daylight hours are so long it's hard to sleep and there's so much to DO. It felt great until a couple days ago when I started to feel like I'd been on vacation too long and was starting to get homesick. Funny that our vacations are mostly full of activity. I listened to the beginning of an Eckhart Tolle video that autoplayed while I was working and someone asked how they could reconcile what he teaches with Abraham Hicks (without naming her). He said that there's the inward and outward movements, the creating and dying back. As an explanation within duality, I equate this with seasons, I generally feel great about the busy, energetic seasons and then loathe the winter, yet understand one depends on the other. This turned into such a huge pattern of suffering over the years, that seems so silly and impersonal. Before the shift I had I almost got stuck in idolizing the spiritual winter stage, then discovering the law of attraction resulted in huge experiential understandings which in turn after the fact may have flipped the balance. The belief that happiness comes from conditions, that happiness comes from events, circumstances and things and is something that someone can have and something someone can lose or secure is so sneaky. You actually create best when you aren't expecting anything from it, this is the essence of creation. I guess that's why I like journaling. I like the amount of focus that trying to explain something in a way that someone else might understand helps me find me on a certain subject. When I'm journaling on my own, it's often lazy and lacks flow and intention. Yet, I also don't really expect anyone to read it or get anything from it, it's for me. So it tricks me into finding a good balance. I got stuck in this really self centered perspective that I was the chosen one. Years ago I adored and kept contemplating this line from the Sia song, "I'm still fighting for peace." And I want it, I want my life so bad I'm doing everything I can Then another one bites the dust It's hard to lose a chosen one You did not break me I'm still fighting for peace Funny when you put the song lyrics together with this video I made. "It's hard to lose a chosen one." How strong this narrative has been of the chosen one. Jesus Christ. Harry Potter. The hero's journey. Essentially you are your own chosen one. You are your perspective. And so much more, you are all the possibilities and the choosing. In the narrative anyone who chooses himself is a narcissistic asshole. "I volunteer as tribute." Because if I don't I loose lose someone I love, someone weaker than I. Jesus Christ. I must do this only as a sacrifice, to save others. I make myself infamous, I make myself eternal in the story, eternally heroic and loved by sacrificing myself for others. 12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You're telling me now, that this as an ideal is suffering? This is all bullshit? Jesus, is co-dependence love? Hello? Hello? C-can you hear me? I can be your China doll, if you like to see me fall Boy, you're so dope, your love is deadly Tell me life is beautiful They think that I have it all I've nothing without you All my dreams and all the lights mean Nothing without you All my dreams and all the lights mean Nothing, if I can't have you

Detachment feels like a forced action. It's a word that implies there is a separate individual which can attach or detach from something. Awakening is recognizing the individual that seems to attach to certain things or outcomes never actually existed. Apparent happenings become impersonal sort of speak.

Doesn’t being identified usually precede desiring? Also, is all suffering the same? I’ve copied and pasted the following several times in the forum. No one has ever really commented on it one way or another. Four types of suffering For whatever it’s worth,,, Intentional suffering is sometimes referred to as Conscious suffering in the Fourth Way. In Talks on Beelzebub's Tales, Bennett distinguishes four types of suffering - Unnecessary Suffering, Unavoidable Suffering, Voluntary Suffering and Intentional Suffering. Lets have a look at each of these to see if they can help our understanding: The first is Unnecessary Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that we incur because of our unreasonable attitudes and expectations towards others, from our ill-will, hatred and rejection of others, from doubt, possessiveness, arrogance and self pity. In other words, suffering arising from our self-importance. The second is Unavoidable Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that comes to us by accident or from events beyond our control, such as interpersonal conflicts, war, disaster, disease or death. Third, we have Voluntary Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that we take upon ourselves in order to accomplish a personal aim, such as an athlete who disciplines himself to win a race, or a student who labours to get good grades. And finally we have Intentional Suffering. According to Bennett, this would be the kind of suffering that we take upon ourselves in order to accomplish an impersonal or altruistic goal, one that is directed more towards service to others or to the Work, and not for any personal gain. Bennett assumes that this is what Gurdjieff meant by Intentional Suffering. From an article on the second Conscious Shock https://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_is_talk_ae2005.htm

the idea of death is a great meditation tool. nothing is more contrary to the ego than death. everything you say about fear of getting old, wasting your life, etc., is pure ego. There is nothing like a good or bad life, only the present moment, free of judgment. if you stick in the present and free the mind of thoughts, the fear of death disappears, because it is seen that the impersonal amplitude that you are cannot die. it is the same for any being, and if your body disappears, there are still countless other bodies existing. But of course, forget about your ego, there will be nothing left of it. that's why you have to die before you die. generously surrender the i. Or not so generously, i surrender it to gain the permanence and the beauty, maybe that's why each time i do i have a big ego reaction. The no ego is full of beauty , but empty of content. The ego hates that emptiness

Exactly. If you look at yourself from the point of view of death, you will see that your "I", your sense of yourself, never existed. it was a mirage. but being, existence, cannot not be. what happens is that it is impersonal, empty.

Four types of suffering For whatever it’s worth,,, I copied this from the thread on George Gurdjieff. A legitimate swatter of hornets nests,,,, Intentional suffering is sometimes referred to as Conscious suffering in the Fourth Way. In Talks on Beelzebub's Tales, Bennett distinguishes four types of suffering - Unnecessary Suffering, Unavoidable Suffering, Voluntary Suffering and Intentional Suffering. Lets have a look at each of these to see if they can help our understanding: The first is Unnecessary Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that we incur because of our unreasonable attitudes and expectations towards others, from our ill-will, hatred and rejection of others, from doubt, possessiveness, arrogance and self pity. In other words, suffering arising from our self-importance. The second is Unavoidable Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that comes to us by accident or from events beyond our control, such as interpersonal conflicts, war, disaster, disease or death. Third, we have Voluntary Suffering. This would be the type of suffering that we take upon ourselves in order to accomplish a personal aim, such as an athlete who disciplines himself to win a race, or a student who labours to get good grades. And finally we have Intentional Suffering. According to Bennett, this would be the kind of suffering that we take upon ourselves in order to accomplish an impersonal or altruistic goal, one that is directed more towards service to others or to the Work, and not for any personal gain. Bennett assumes that this is what Gurdjieff meant by Intentional Suffering. From an article on the second Conscious Shock https://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_is_talk_ae2005.htm

but to what extent can you be enlightened? I guess quite deeply. I see reality as about to dissolve, a screen of color, like a set behind what is emptiness. I talk to people and I see their emptiness, they are just forms ... like me! but what is behind, that void, seems unknowable . it is nothing, it is completely impersonal, not human, but somehow it has to be intelligent, it is enough to observe the apparent reality to deduce the intelligence of the absolute. But how can the absolute be intelligent if it is nothing? because obviously, it is not "something". We are the absolute right now, and it's impersonal. Is impossible to understand that there is void, nothing, like an abyss. Think about that is insane, maybe that's why the mistics always says that it's uncognwable. Except Leo, of course

Think about it this way... You are not *perceiving* other people, so what is happening is that you're having a conscious direct experience of infinity manifesting itself in different ways. Where is 'your' Consciousness located? Where is the present moment occuring? The present moment is in fact impersonal consciousness/God experiencing whatever you're conscious of in the 'Now', because 'in the now' you are conscious, so everything is happening in your awareness, since you're Consciousness itself. ❤ So when you say "imagining infinite dreams symultaneously', "experiencing them separately" etc, you assume the present moment is separate from consciousness. Which is not the case. The present moment is You being conscious. Time is imaginary.

Impersonal Consciousness cannot feel alone. The ego-mind does.

Im here to help! You can unlock levels of imagination that are unimaginable! Kind of like your dreams, you have way more imagination when you are impersonal. Don't try to imagine things, but rather see what your imagination has in store, you just be the observer of it. If you can see black only, thats a great start. You have the canvas. Now you can imagine a white dot on it? Try enlarging the dot. Imagine it in another colour. Imagine the black only as another colour too. Zoom in, zoom out, play around that plane of imagination. Start small. In my opinion if you start imagining dots, lines, circles, triangles, basic shapes, then your mind will get the building blocks to imagine more complex things further. Or get more tuned with the imaginative part of yourself. You can try a visualisation technique I like which is to go to the edge of your experience now and "see" what is beyond there. You might get an impression of seeing something from your imagination. Even if not, just do not identify with what you saw and centre as the empty (or otherwise very small) being that is able to see that space of imagination beyond the edge of your visual perception. Then keep watching for what that empty being sees, and keep grounding as that being - which is not hard as it is the one who sees. Tell me if you get any visualisations from this. Its basically self inquiry using the imaginary plane.

Members seem to be already influenced by the air of demonization. Ever since confessing my condition I've been accused of 'crying', creating drama and being suicidal while discussing impersonal opinions.

They can be both, but ad hominems are often directly addressing some personal quality which deviates from the content of the discussion. For example, if you said that you think math is often portayed as more useful than it truly is, an ad hominem answer to that could be "you think that because you're stupid". Ad hominem is essentially when you turn an initially impersonal discussion into a personal matter when it isn't warranted or appropriate.

An awakening with ego also present can be much more pleasant than an experience which is more impersonal. It speaks to the story you’ve just lived. It satisfies that. It explains that. It breaks the limitations of that. If both awakenings were of the same intensity, I’d prefer to awaken in this reality due to the emotional significance of your human life. You living that specific incarnation was not a mistake.

Probably if we use that type of language. I think it more like this. Impersonal divine (higher self) permanent individuality (soul) and present personality (ego). The journey is to transcend the false personality and have the permanent individuality to take over. Then unite the individuality with the higher self and achieve the goal of yoga ( union ). The permanent individuality might be the higher self you are talking about. It is that which reincarnates but also eternal. It is not the ONE but it's goal is to unite with the ONE. All past life memories are stored there. You may not remember but it knows. You are it but also not. It absorbs spiritual experience you have and exalts itself through you. Hint: it is also the thinker but not the thought process.

To get an understanding of the pre trans fallacy while learning the Spiral Dynamics model helped me to have an understanding that truly felt like resolving several disparities at once. It grew my Worldview and stretched my frame of reference. It seems that the impersonal aspects that come into play in the trans personal stage and states are often misinterpreted by others as being cold and uncaring. Just one more aspect of the pre trans fallacy. Thunderstorms have knocked out my electric. I’m pecking away on my cell phone with not a whole lot of battery left.

@Jamajczyk You can't see it, so it only exists like that, as something you can't see. You only imagine that there are bees and snakes unless they are in your direct experience right now, but then you imagine that they can see at all. Some things are personal, some physical, and some cultural, it's wise to know how to differentiate between those, but what unites them is that all these areas are imagined by the Universe, so in the end, it's all imagination, but impersonal imagination, not personal of which you usually think when you hear the word imagination.

Human's evolved to live in small tribal communities; keep your settlements small to avoid the inevitable downfall of any empire; thus, it would do thee well to establish a non-indoctrinated system of faith that centers around the ultimate truth of an impersonal self that is to be cultivated and culminated for the sake of civil prosper.

It seemed to say that the Devil had fetched her, but to be accurate, the dream said it was the wild huntsman, the gundholt, or wearer of the green hat, who hunted with his wolves that night. It was the season of Fohn storms in January. It was Wotan, the God of my Alemannic ancestors who had gathered my mother to her ancestors. Negatively, to the wild horde, but positively to the blessed folk. It was the Christian Missionaries who turned Wotan into a Devil. He is an important God, a Mercury or Hermes as the Romans correctly realized. A nature spirit who returned to life again in the Merlin of the grail legend and became as the spiritus mercurialis. The sought-after arcanum of the alchemists. Thus the dream says that the soul of his mother was taken into that greater territory of the Self, which lies beyond the segment of Christian morality. Taken into that wholeness of nature, and spirit. In which conflicts and contradictions are resolved. He went home and while riding the night train he had a feeling of great grief, but in his heart of hearts he could not be mournful. And this for a strange reason - during the entire journey, he continually heard dance music. Laughter. And jollity. As though a wedding were being celebrated. This contrasted violently with the devastating impression the dream had made on him. One the one hand, music and laughter and it was impossible to yield entirely to his sorrow. Again and again it was on the point of overwhelming him. But the next moment he would find himself once more engulfed by the cheerful melodies. One side was warm and joyful and the other of terror and grief. He was thrown back and forth between these contrasting emotions. This paradox can be explained if we suppose that at one moment death was being represented from the point of view of the ego. And at the next, from that of the psyche. In the first case, it appeared as a catastrophe that is how it so often strikes us. As if wicked and pettiless powers had put an end to human life. And so it is death is indeed a fearful piece of brutality. There is no sense pretending otherwise. It is brutal not only as a physical event, but far more so psychically. A human being is torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of death. There no longer exists any hope of a relationship. For all the bridges have been smashed in one blow. Those who deserve a long life are cut off in the prime of their years, and good for nothings live to a ripe old age. This is a cruel reality which we have no right to sidestep. The actual experience of the cruelty and wantonness of death can so embitter us that we conclude there is no merciful God. No justice and no kindness. From another point of view, however, death appears as a joyful event. In the light of eternity, it is a wedding. The soul attains as it were, its missing half. It achieves wholeness. Many cultures view death as a celebration of this return to wholeness. He had a dream of his father who looked refreshed, they went into Jung's library and spoke to one another and to show off his home and family, his books that he had written - but he saw that his father was preoccupied. His father wanted something from him. His father asked him about marital psychology, but then he awoke - and realized later that it might have had to do with his mother's death. The marriage was not happy and they made typical mistakes couples make. The dream was a forecast of his mother's death. He would have to resume the relationship again but had no better understanding in this timeless state, and needed to speak to someone among the living who would have a fresh approach. Since the unconscious, as the result of it's spatio-temporal relativity possesses better sources of information than the conscious mind, which has only sense perceptions available to it - we are dependent for our myth of life after death upon the meager hints of dreams and similar spontaneous revelations from the unconscious. We cannot attribute to these illusions the value of knowledge let alone prove - they can, however, serve as suitable bases for mythic amplifications. They give the intellect the raw material which is indispensable for its vitality. Cut off the intermediary world of mythic imagination and the mind falls prey to doctrinaire rigities. On the other hand, too much traffic with these germs of myth is dangerous for weak and suggestible minds, for they're lead to mistake vague intimations for substantial knowledge. One widespread myth of the hereafter is formed by the ideas and images centering on reincarnation. India has a highly complex intellectual culture and is much older than the West - the idea of reincarnation is as much taken for granted as among us the idea that God created the world. In keeping with the spirit of the East, the succession of birth and death is viewed as an endless continuity. As an eternal wheel rolling on forever without a goal - man lives and attains knowledges and dies and begins again from the beginning, only with the Buddha does the idea of a goal emerge. Namely the overcoming of earthly existence. The mythic needs of the Occidental call for an evolutionary cosmogony with a beginning and a goal. The Occidental rebels against a cosmogony with a beginning and mere end. Just as he cannot accept that the idea of a static self contained eternal cycle of events. The Oriental on the other hand seems to be able to come to terms with this idea. Apparently there is no unanimous feeling about the nature of the world anymore than there is general agreement among contemporary astronomers on this question. To Western man, the meaninglessness of a merely static universe is unbearable. He must assume that it has meaning. The Oriental does not need to make this assumption, rather he embodies it, whereas the Occidental feels the need to complete the meaning of the world - and strives for the fulfillment of meaning in man, where the Oriental strives for the fulfillment of meaning in man stripping the world and existence from himself. Both are right. Western man seems predominantly extroverted, Eastern man predominantly introverted. The former projects the meaning and considers that it exists in objects. The later feels the meaning in himself, but the meaning is both without and within. The idea of rebirth is inseparable from that of karma - the crucial question is whether a man's karma is personal or not. If it is - then the preordained destiny with which a man enters life represents an achievement from previous lives and a personal continuity therefore exists. If however, this is not so - and an impersonal karma is seized upon in the act of birth, then that karma is incarnated again without there being any personal continuity. Buddha was twice asked by his disciples whether man's karma is personal or not - each time he fended off the question and did not go into the matter. "To know this would not contribute to liberating one's self from the illusion of existence." Buddha considered it far more useful for his students to meditate upon the Nidana chain that is upon birth, life, old age and death - and upon the cause and effect of suffering. I know no answer to the question of whether the karma which I lived is the outcome of my past lives or whether it is not rather the achievement of my ancestors whose heritage comes together in me. Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors, and do I embody these lives again? Have I lived before in the past as a specific personality and did I progress so far in that life that I am now able to seek a solution? I do not know... Buddha left the question open - he himself did not know with certainty. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries, and therefore encountered questions I was not yet able to answer. That I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me. When I die, my deeds will follow along with me - that is how I imagine it. I will bring with me what I have done. In the meantime it is important to ensure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands. Buddha had this thought when he tried to keep his students from wasting time on useless speculation. The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or conversely, I myself am a question, which is addressed to the world and I must communicate my answer - for otherwise I am dependent upon the world's answer. That is a supra personal life task, which I accomplish only by effort and with great difficulty. Perhaps it is a question which preoccupied by ancestors. And which they could not answer. (As I sit here, writing this - this Being speaks. I don't know who it is - the artwork comes from a song called "Stuck in a Timeloop". The Gods must have a slow, drawn, deliberate way of using words - that carry - like playing something of intellectual/metaphyisical substance at .25 and fully understanding what is said, words become LUSTROUS; golden, liquid and FELT - and I will bet the words circle around like that, too - in waves of information, sound, and whathaveyou. I've gotten about ten other signs from the other side, but they come in so fast and there is too much information within them to be able to write it out - which is as it usually goes. There are major things happening across the planet that will change things in one way or another, for better or worse, I don't know - and all the intelligences collected over billions of years culminating into this One Singular moment, and the energy, life, karma, nature, consciousness, awareness... I could make a long list... the witnesses for this event are leviathans. This really is, if there is ever a time - it would be happening Now. It seems odd to say this, because i know that a lot of people have said so in the past - but I can SEE it and FEEL it and KNOW it. And with how the world is changing the way that it is - and the cosmologies that we have... I can't explain it, but the tipping point for everyone is sneaking up and no one can really see it, and I don't know what it is other than an inner knowing, and a process much like Jung's - but at the end of the day you can never fully be sure up until the end. I feel like I am starting to get a good grasp on this, though - but it is not translatable into language. As above, so below. This is especially pertinent to witches/shamans/moons/sorcerers because we have access to some sort of thing that reaches out from the other side. I wonder how they will appear for different people? And I don't much care if people believe me or not, and I don't want anyone to follow me because I am just learning and exploring. I feel that makes me authentic, for those reasons - this morning, a shift in energy - there aren't signs anymore so much as rapid succession of the environment giving me clues about how this reality works - mythology is personal.) The dionysians' side of life to with the Christian seems to have lost the way. Or is the the restless Wotan Hermes of my ancestors who poses challenging riddles? Would I feel to be the resultant of my ancestors lives? Or a karma acquired in a previous personal life might perhaps equally be an impersonal archetype which today presses hard on everyone and has taken a particular hold upon me. An archetype such as, for example, the development over the centuries of the divine triad and its confrontation with the feminine principle? Or the still pending answer to the gnostic question, as to the origin of evil, or to put it another way - the incompleteness of the Christian God image. Through the achievement of an individual, a question enters the world - to which he must provide some kind of answer. For example - my way of posing the question as well as my answer may be unsatisfactory - that being so - someone who has my karma or I myself would have to be reborn in order to give a more complete answer. It might have been that I would not be reborn again so long as the world needed no such answer. And that I would be entitled to several hundred years of peace until someone was once more needed who took an interest in these matters and could profitably tackle the task aknew. For a while a period of rest could ensue until the stint done in the previous lifetime needed to be taken up again. The question of karma is obscured to me. As is also the problem of personal rebirth, or of the transmigration of souls. With a free and open mind, I listen attentively to the Indian doctrine of rebirth and look around at the world of my own experience to see whether somewhere and somehow there is some authentic signs pointing toward reincarnation. A belief is only the phenomenon of belief, not the content of the belief. Jung had a series of dreams that gave him insight into reincarnation but did not find proof in the outer world, but after the experience viewed reincarnation with a new lense - thought without being in a position to assert a definitive opinion. If we assume life continues there we cannot conceive of any other form of existence except a psychic one. For the life of the psyche requires no space - and no time. Psychic existence and above all the inner images with which we are here concerned - supply the material for all the mythic speculations about a life in the here after. He imagines that life as a continuance in the world of images - thus the psyche might be that existence in which the hereafter, with a land of the dead, is located. From this psychological point of view, life in the here after would seem to be a logical continuation of the psychic life of old age. With increasing age, contemplation and reflection, the inner images naturally play an ever greater part in man's life. Your old men shall dream dreams that to be sure presupposes that the psyches of the old man have not become wooden, or entirely petrified. In old age, one begins to let memories unroll before the mind's eye, and musings to recognize one's self in the inner and outer images of the past. This is like a preparation for an existence in the hereafter - just as in Plato's view philosophy is a preparation for death. The inner images keep me from getting lost in personal retrospection. Many old people become too involved in their reconstruction of past events. They remain imprisoned in these memories. But if it is reflective and is translated into images, this is beneficial. Try to see the line that leads through your life into the world and out of the world again. In general, the conception people form of the hereafter is largely made up of wishful thinking and prejudices. Thus in most conceptions, the hereafter is pictured as a pleasant place that does not seem so obvious to me, I hardly think that after death - we shall be sprinted to some lovely flowering meadow - if everything were pleasant and good in the hereafter, truly there would be some friendly communication between us and the blessed spirits. And an outpouring upon us of goodness and beauty from the prenatal state - but there is nothing of the sort. Why is there this insurmountable barrier between the departed and the living? At least half the reports of encounters with the dead tell of terrifying experiences with dark spirits, and it is the rule that the land of the dead observes icy silence, unperturbed by the grief of the bereaved. The world is far too unitary for there to be a hereafter in which the rule of opposites is completely absent. There too is nature, which after its fashion is also God's. The world into which we enter after death will be grand and terrible - like God and like all of nature that we know. Suffering does not entirely cease, granted that what I experienced in my 1944 visions, liberation from the burden of the body, and perception of meaning - gave me the deepest bliss. Nevertheless, there was darkness, too. And strange cessation of human warmth, If there were no imperfections, no primordial defect in the ground of creation - why should there be any urge to create? Any longing for what must be yet fulfilled? Why should the Gods be the least bit concerned about man and creation, about the continuation of the Nidara chain to infinity? After all, the Buddha opposes to the painful illusion of existence, as quote none - and the Christian hopes for the swift coming of this world's end. It seems probable that in the hereafter too, there exists certain limitations, but that the souls of the dead only gradually find out where the limits of the liberated state lie. Somewhere out there, there must be a determinant. A necessity conditioning of the world which seeks to put an end to the after death state. This creative determinant - so I imagine it, must decide what souls will plunge again into birth. Certain souls, I imagine, feel the state of three dimensional existence to be more blissful than that of eternity. But perhaps that depends on how much of completeness or incompleteness they have taken across with them from their human existence. It is possible that any further spell of three dimensional life would have no more meaning, once the soul had reached a certain stage of understanding. It would then no longer have to return, fuller understanding having put to route the desire for re-embodiment. Then the soul would vanish from the three dimensional world and attain what the Buddhists call Nirvana. But if a karma still remains to be disposed of, then the soul relapses again into desires and returns to life once more. Perhaps even doing so, out of the realization that something remains to be completed. It must have been primarily a passionate urge toward understanding, which brought about my birth. For that is the strongest element in my nature. This insatiable drive toward understanding has, as it were, created a consciousness in order to know what is and what happens, and in order to piece together mythic conceptions from the slender hands of the unknowable. We lack concrete proof that anything of us is preserved for eternity, at most we can say that there is some probability that something out of our psyche continues beyond physical death. Whether what continues to exist is conscious of itself, we do not know either. We feel the need to form some opinion on this question, we might possibly consider what has been learned from the phenomena of psychic dissociation. In most cases, where a split off complex manifests itself it does so in the form of a personality. As if the complex had a consciousness of itself. Thus the voices is heard by the insane are personified. I dealt with this phenomenon of personified complexes in my doctoral dissertation. We might, if we wish, adduce these complexes as evidence for a continuity of consciousness. Likewise, in favour of such an assumption are certain astonishing observations in cases of profound syncope after acute injuries to the brain and in severe states of collapse. In both situations, total loss of consciousness can be accompanied by perceptions of the outside world, and vivid dream experiences. Since the cerebral cortex, the seat of consciousness is not functioning at these times, there is as yet, no explanation for such phenomena. They may be evidence for at least a subjective persistence of the capacity for consciousness. Even in a state of apparent unconsciousness, the problem of the relationship between eternal man, the self and earthly man - in time and space, was illuminated by two dreams of mind. In one dream, which I had in October - 1958, I caught sight from my house of two lense shaped metallic gleaming discs which hurtled in a narrow arch of the house and down to the lake. They were two UFOs. Then another body came flying directly toward me. It was a perfectly circular lense, like the objective of a telescope. At a distance of four or five hundred yards it stood still for a moment and then flew off. Immediately afterward, another came speeding through the air, a lense with a metallic extension which lead to a box. A magic lantern. At a distance of 60 or 70 yards, it stood still in the air, pointing straight at me. I awoke with a feeling of astonishment. Still, half in the dream, the thought passed through my head. We always think that the UFOs are projections of ours. Now it turns out that we are their projections. I am projected by the magic lantern as C.J. Jung, but who manipulates the apparatus? I had dreamed once before of the problem of the self and the ego. In that earlier dream, I was on a hiking trip. I was walking along a little road through a hilly landscape. The sun was shining, and I had a wide view in all directions. Then I came to a small wayside chapel. The door was ajar and I went in. To my surprise, there was no image of the virgin on the altar and no crucifix either, but only a wonderful flower arrangement. But then I saw that on the floor in front of the altar facing me sat a yogi in lotus posture in deep meditation. When I looked at him more closely, I realized that he had my face. I startled in profound fright and awoke with the thought - "Aha!" - so he is the one who is meditating me. He has a dream. And I am it. I knew then, when he awakened I would no longer be. I had this dream after my illness in 1944. It is a parable. My self retires into meditation and medites my earthly form. To put it another way, it assumes human shape in order to enter three dimensional existence. As if someone were putting on a diver's suit in order to dive into the sea. When it renounces existence in the hereafter, the self assumes a religious posture as the chapel in the dream shows. In earthly form, it can pass through the experiences of the three dimensional world. And by greater awareness, take a further step toward realization. The figure of the yogi then, would more or less represent my unconscious prenatal wholeness and the far East, as is often the case in dreams a psychic state, alien, and opposed to our own. Like the magic lantern, the yogi's meditation projects my empirical reality. As a rule, we see this causal relationship in reverse. In the products of the unconscious we discover mandala symbols, which express wholeness and whenever we wish to express wholeness, we employ just such figures. Our basis is ego consciousness. Our world, the field of light centered upon the focal point of the ego - from that point, we look out upon an enigmatic world of obscurity. Never knowing to what extent the shadow we form we see are caused by our consciousness. Or possess a reality of their own. The superficial observer is content with the first assumption, but closer studies show that as a rule - the images of the unconscious are not produced by the consciousness. But have a reality and spontaneity of their own. Nevertheless, we regard them as mere marginal phenomena. The aim of both these dreams is to affect a reversal of the relationship between ego consciousness and the unconscious. And to represent the unconscious as the generator of the empirical personality. This reversal suggests that in the opinion of the other side, our unconscious existence is the real one. And out conscious world, a kind of illusion. An apparent reality constructed for a specific purpose. Like a dream which seems a reality as long as we are in it. It is clear that this state of affairs resembled very closely to the Oriental conception of Maya. Unconscious wholeness therefore seems the true spirit of all biological and psychic events and strives for total realization, which in man's case, signifies the attainment of total consciousness. Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense, and self knowledge is therefore the heart and essence of this process. The Oriental attributes unquestionably divine significance to the self and according to the ancient Christian view, self knowledge is the road to knowledge of God. The decisive question for man is, is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite, can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities. And upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions. Our talent or our beauty. The more man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims. And the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody. And if we do not embody that, life is wasted. In our relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship - the feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is the self. It is manifested in the experience "I Am" only that. Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness, we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal. As both the one and the other. In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination, that is ultimately limited, we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then in in an era which has concentrated exclusively upon extension of living space and increase of rational knowledge at all costs, it is a supreme challenge to ask man to become conscious of his uniqueness and his limitation. Uniqueness and limitation are synonymous. Without them, no perception of the unlimited is possible and consequently, no coming to consciousness either. Merely a delusory identity with it which takes the form of intoxication. Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a demonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the short sightedness of the super intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness, but man's task is the exact opposite. To become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness. Nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being. thus evading his destiny. Which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious.

The desire for a new future order of things, substantially different from the present, is religious conviction at its core - the awaiting for the eventual coming of the Kingdom of God - in the external outside world rather than the internal personal sphere. Anti-capitalist sentiment, void of a precise and substantiated scientific analysis backed by empirical fact, becomes a religion in itself, a religion of opposition against an imagined external Other cause of evil and suffering seeking to rationalize and explain inner suffering within and caused by the self. It serves, paradoxically, as the opium for explaining to oneself the causes of his or her one's pervasive feeling of alienation from thy self, thy labor, and other's by numbing the actual inner and experiential alienation with a hyper-abstract extrapolation that sees the cause in an imagined imposed order of capitalism, in its perceived and imagined historical, societal and current economic form, while not being aware that it's a system you wilfully participate in everyday life via participation in capitalist exchange - as the author, Mark Fisher poignantly points out: ''accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital. What is being disavowed in the abjection of evil and ignorance onto fantasmatic Others is our own complicity in the planetary networks of oppression. What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our cooperation.'' ''The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us." Capitalist realism, as the author Mark Fisher notes, in his book of the same title, is very far from precluding a certain anti-capitalism. As Zizek has provocatively pointed out, anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism. Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it. What we have here is a vision of control and communication much as Jean Baudrillard understood it, in which subjugation no longer takes the form of subordination to an extrinsic spectacle, but rather invites us to interact and participate. But this kind of irony feeds rather than challenges capitalist realism. A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called "interpassivity": the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. "The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief." "Capitalist ideology", in general, Zizek maintains, "consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of the inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange." According to Zizek, "capitalism, in general, relies on this structure of disavowal." "We believe money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads. Corporate anti-capitalism wouldn't matter if it could be differentiated from an authentic anti-capitalist movement. The so-called anti-capitalist movement seemed also to have conceded too much to capitalist realism Since it was unable to posit a coherent alternative political-economic model to capitalism, the suspicion was that the actual aim was not to replace capitalism but to mitigate its worst excesses; and, since the form of its activities tended to be the staging of protests rather than a political organization, there's a sense that the anti-capitalism movement consisted of making a series of hysterical demands which it didn't expect to be met. Protests have formed a kind of carnivalesque background noise to capitalist realism."

tension (n.) 1530s, "a stretched condition," from French tension (16c.) or directly from Latin tensionem (nominative tensio) "a stretching" (in Medieval Latin "a struggle, contest"), noun of state from tensus, past participle of tendere "to stretch," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." The sense of "nervous strain" is first recorded 1763. The meaning "stress along lines of electromotive force" (as in high-tension wires) is recorded from 1785. attention (n.) late 14c., "a giving heed, active direction of the mind upon some object or topic," from Old French attencion and directly from Latin attentionem (nominative attentio) "attention, attentiveness," noun of action from past-participle stem of attendere "give heed to," literally "to stretch toward," from ad "to, toward" (see ad-) + tendere "stretch," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." tender (adj.) "soft, easily injured," early 13c., from Old French tendre "soft, delicate; young" (11c.), from Latin tenerem (nominative tener) "soft, delicate; of tender age, youthful," from a derivative of PIE root *ten- "to stretch," on the notion of "stretched," hence "thin," hence "weak" or "young." Compare Sanskrit tarunah "young, tender," Greek teren "tender, delicate," Armenian t'arm "young, fresh, green." tend (v.1) "to incline, to move in a certain direction," early 14c., from Old French tendre "stretch out, hold forth, hand over, offer" (11c.), from Latin tendere "to stretch, extend, make tense; aim, direct; direct oneself, hold a course," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." You cannot stretch anything without having two seperate points. The act of stretching is an act in duality with creates tension and then the enivitable release of that resistance, momentum and all movement. Tension could not be created at all if the true nature was not non-resistance and nonseperation. Ok, so this is where string theory comes from, but actually because there is no matter outside Awareness of it, it's the observer holding the attention or stretching thier own attention from observer to object that is the "string", so to speak. Every love song or love story is an exploration of the same sort, string theory is an exploration. Every scientist's cold, logical contemplations and observations are as emotional and subjective as an Elvis song and every Elvis song is as cold and impersonal as a scientist's data.

I don't really think what you're saying is true in terms of no one hiding behind masks. I tend to think this populace here is a bit defensive in general and really trying to become something else than what they are. But what I was saying is that there are a myriad of masculine instincts beyond just the desire to have sex with attractive women. But you would think otherwise on this forum, as many men boil their masculinity down to that quite often. And this reflects an underdeveloped orientation to masculinity. Consider that human instincts exist for a very important reason... survival in the form of self-preservation and species preservation. All of our instincts are geared towards that. The masculine instinct to sew the seed widely with many fertile women is a strong drive for that reason. But consider also, that a pre-birth-control society based on men ONLY owning that part of their masculinity. And that becomes a society that is piss poor in terms of species preservation (and therefore self-preservation) because you have men impregnating lots of women... meaning fathering lots of children that he has no time/ability to father. So, there are other pro-social instincts that come in and temper this instinct, otherwise society doesn't function. In present day, that instinct is still designed to be tempered by those other instincts. The difference now is that we have birth control. And men are having a hard time developing a connection to those other instincts because there is not as much of an impetus to temper the beauty-seeking drive. So, when a man only owns the beauty-seeking drive of his masculine instinct without regard to his other instincts like his instincts towards pair bonding, fatherhood, commitment, community building, etc. this can lead to a society that's out of alignment and a populace of men who are out of alignment with the full depth and breadth of their masculinity... having only a one-note connection to their masculinity. And it also leads to men losing the respect of women who can't be satisfied when a man is fixated upon just one of his masculine drives. And this particular masculine drive is impersonal, so it orients to women more as objects than as people just as a natural outcome of that drive. So, it's both triggering and unsatisfying at once from the female perspective when this drive is not integrated and channeled with the other drives that are more personal.

The more you look for flaws the more you'll see. The more you look for things to appreciate, the more you'll find to appreciate. There aren't two of you, one that can judge the other and find the other lacking or falling short. It's an exploration, an adventure with no end, because what you truly are is not limited and finite, you are infinite. You would not want there to be an end, but if you aren't quite seeing it as an adventure for you to enjoy and aren't having fun, then it's not you that needs to change but your relationship with you. The only real end so to speak is that you will see through the reality of the self that you wish to change, and realize that there are not two of you. Ever notice how you can't "get" a joke if you're stressed, anxious or taking part of it personally? "Shadow work" or light work works JUST like that. As stuff starts to bubble up, it is seen as impersonal and is seen as the Love that it is. As long as there's a self trying to change itself into something it thinks it will like better than what it already is, you cannot see this, because it's not in alignement with the timeless, infinite, whole Love that IS already its true Self, true clarity, the very foundation for change itSelf.

It's all a game. It can't be anything else. Yes, but there is also less attachment to things and the Love is more impersonal and universal rather than localized.

Yea, there isn't even someone or something to be let go of. When something is actually let go of it is the death and the total absence of that thing. If there is still consciousness of what is claimed to be let go of, it hasn't been let go of. Letting go is absolutely impersonal, it has nothing to do with consciousness. Consciousness is holding on to things, and the mind uses consciousness to try and get rid of it. The ultimate let go is that it isn't here now already, the illusion is that there is an illusion.

Meh whatever, don't let this stuff bother you. I probably would have ate this video up and thought all this was a cult too if I was 18 again. Some people just aren't open minded enough or they aren't at the right point in their lives for it. When someone is ready, they are ready. Or maybe never will be! Oh well that's the brutal impersonal universe we occupy. Just be grateful it helped you in the ways it did and pay it forward. But please stoop to their level and turn it into a pissing match of Actualized.Org vs Materialism that needs to be defended like an ideology. That undermines the whole purpose of this larger self/world improvement work. Let people think what they want to think. Everything is exactly perfect just the way it is.