Zigzag Idiot and the ladder of Objective Reason

[Zigzag Idiot]

             Chief feature = psychological blindspot = false personality = Identification = Imagination

Chief feature is a Fourth Way term.   3 minutes

Chief feature is at the heart of ones own self deception. 

[Zigzag Idiot]

                                                                        Modafinil and Clarity 

In trying the Supplement Modafinil recently, I've realized more the value of clarity in relation to self awareness and  awareness in general. With greater clarity my inner world is calmer which makes me more mindful creating greater efficiency in carrying out tasks. 

The atmosphere of my luminous egg stays cleaner. In my practice with concentration and emotional balance I use Shamanisms idea of the luminous egg for visualizing and containing what Gurdjieff called our atmosphere. If I have a lot of distractions, thinking of things far away, in the past or in the future, my atmosphere is contaminated or has lost its hermetic seal.  Gurdjieff gave a sitting Practice for cleaning one's atmosphere. This practice is easier to do with just a little increase in clarity. So, things can start to add up .

[Zigzag Idiot]

Relates very much to considerations about life purpose.

[Zigzag Idiot]

I wish these short videos had been around when I first started trying to learn the system. I know for sure they are helpful in refreshing my past learning and reminding me of different aspects which are interconnected.

To say the subject matter in this one is relevant to everyone here and also the tone of the forum at the moment would be one hell of an understatement.  7:57 minutes

[Zigzag Idiot]

I just realized how a lot of the things I post on here are horribly depressing if not offensive from certain perspectives. Like the Ouspensky and Gurdjieff stuff. Or Martin Butlers dim view of the financial elite.

And the time devoted to meditation, self observation, Inquiry, etc., seems really impractical. Also from certain perspectives.

I can really understand why there would be no motivation for doing this if one were emotionally balanced and relatively happy.  There are different kinds of stresses now in the world than there was 50 years ago for sure. Even 20 years ago. In the form of existential angst and meaninglessness,,,, maybe? 

I understand the value of work on self esteem. The real need for it in a practical sense. Some of the views in the work on integration and transcendence would almost seem to be mocking those who are doing work on self esteem and that is a shame because it's only a perception and a mistaken one. 

Ken Wilber makes the case that with our complex subtle energy centers which allow for a real possible higher development there exist the other side of this coin. The Human has possibilities for beautiful higher potentials but these complexities are also responsible for our really potential messed-up-ness.

They keep spitting out these jewels and so here is another one for those who are interested and following this path. The audio on this one is worse. It has the quality of an automated robocall but whoever is editing and putting these together are really doing a fine job in how they arrange the material IME.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

We Have Betrayed Ourselves

When we are genuinely interested in the truth, the whole truth, we realize with a greater sorrow that this betrayal from the outside is less terrible than another betrayal: we come to understand that we have betrayed ourselves. We realize that when our environment betrayed us and abandoned us, with varying degrees of insensitivity, we felt alone and abandoned, with no one relating to us. To be real meant being isolated from the environment, living in another universe, a universe not seen by our parents, not acknowledged by them, even not known by them... so we learned to pretend, to be like them, to join them in their world, the world of lies, the world of the shell, the conventional world. We became what they wanted us to be, what they paid attention to in us, what they preferred in us, what made them relate to us. Through this process of accommodation, we abandoned and rejected what they could not see, the parts of us they did not relate to. Since our Essence was the element they recognized or understood least, our Essence was the central element we disowned. We ended up abandoning and hiding our most precious nature. We hid it finally even from ourselves; most of us eventually forgot it altogether. 

The Point of Existence, pg. 319

                                                                               The watch of the heart

Meditation has helped my capacity for forgiveness. Letting go of thoughts in meditation is good practice for letting go of grievences. The same inner movement in forgiveness. . I know how quickly I can get drawn in to being identified with a particular perspective on any day though. How quickly the passion of anger can appear.

I really don't know much about Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It has a similarity to A Course In Miracles though in its focus on the possibility of realizing deep peace through forgiveness but just as important is the ongoing 'watch of the heart' as it's referred to by some. I'm not a bit interested in Church or Religion or any kind of group activity.

Small quotes from an article by Cynthia Bourgeault. This first is her quoting modern Sufi Master Kabir Helminski --

"We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call “heart."

"The heart,” Helminski continues, is the antenna that receives the emanations of subtler levels of existence. The human heart has its proper field of function beyond the limits of the superficial, reactive ego-self. Awakening the heart, or the spiritualized mind, is an unlimited process of making the mind more sensitive, focused, energized, subtle, and refined, of joining it to its cosmic milieu, the infinity of love."

 

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In this one sentence, the whole of the teaching is conveyed. What remains is for us to come to a greater understanding of how this purification is actually accomplished: a critical issue on which Christian tradition is by no means unanimous."

From -- https://parabola.org/2017/01/31/the-way-of-the-heart-cynthia-bourgeault/

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

                                                        Understanding surpasses forgiveness

 

When you understand. You don't take anything in a negative way. If you have total understanding you will never again have to forgive anyone or make apologies. If you're not stirred by some outside influence that produces anger or any of the other passions that make us forget ourselves, we don't get offended or become a reactive Idiot thus foregoing forgiveness and apologies.

We awaken and then nap off and on for a good while. Not all of us. There are different ways. 

My first awakening was that things are different than I thought.

The second awakening was that the World is asleep.

The third awakening was that there are deeper layers.

[Zigzag Idiot]

Maurice Nicoll's PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENTARIES ON THE TEACHING OF GURDJIEFF & OUSPENSKY is over 1700 pages but is a joy to read if you're into the Fourth way or esoteric Christianity. This is distilled down into about 120 pages in a PDF ebook called GEMS OF WISDOM. The link to the PDF is below the quotes. 

This first one look close. It doesn't say that you have no right to be negative. It says you have a right not to be negative.

 

YOU HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO BE NEGATIVE’

“Now the Work says you have a right not to be negative...To be able to feel this draws down force to help you. You stand upright, as it were, in yourself, among all the mess of your negativeness, and you feel and know that it is not necessary to lie down in that mess. To say this phrase in the right way to yourself, to feel the meaning of the words: ‘I have a right not to be negative,’ is actually a form of self- remembering, of feeling a trace of real ‘I,’ that lifts you up above the level of your negative ‘I’s which are all the time telling you without a pause that you have every right to be negative.” V. 1, p. 161

GIVING UP SUFFERING

“A man, a woman, cannot awaken if they retain this dreadful weight, their mechanical suffering, and nourish it, by a continual process of justifying it.” V. 4, p. 1240

GIVING UP SUFFERING II

“A man, a woman, must give up their suffering and sacrifice that
first of all, because this can lead to a change of Being. For this to happen one must be able to see through self-observation what one suffers from...There is the suffering of man towards woman, of woman towards man...Then take all the mechanical forms of suffer- ing that arise from feeling that you have never been understood by your parents, your husband, your wife, or your children...It is exactly this suffering derived from life and all its awkwardness that has to be sacrificed.” V. 3, pp. 850, 852

GIVING UP SUFFERING III

“To serve the Work means to obey what it teaches you to practice on yourself. You want to be gloomy and moody, to object, and so on, and you observe your state and begin to separate from it—then you are serving the Work. And in so doing you are giving up some of your mechanical suffering.” V. 3, p. 855

GIVING UP SUFFERING IV

“By work on oneself . . . one rises in the ‘Ladder of Being’ represented by the Ray of Creation. But this rising is only possible by sacrifice. To behave as you always do, and expect to rise, is impossible. One must, to begin with, sacrifice one’s suffering. All self-pity, all self-cradling, vanity, secret absurd fears, all self-sentimentality, all inner accounting, all pitiful pictures, all sighs, inner groans, and complaints, must be burned up in the fire of increasing Consciousness.” V. 3, p. 1090

GIVING UP SUFFERING V

“All our mechanical suffering is fraudulent only we will not admit it. Fraudulent suffering is the keynote to what we have to sacrifice. Real suffering is utterly different and always opens us up to a higher level: fraudulent suffering closes us.” V. 3, p. 853

WATCHING EMOTIONS

“In yourself everyone else is helpless. You can, as it were, drag a person into the cave of yourself and do what you like with her or him. You may be polite naturally, but in the Work, which is all about purifying or organizing the inner life, it is not enough. It is how you behave internally, invisibly to one another that really counts...Your most negative and most dangerous ‘I’s may come forward when you are alone. . .when you feel that no one is looking. Yes, but you must look.” V. 1, pp. 216, 256

WATCHING EMOTIONS II

“You may treat a person outside you well. Yes, but how do you treat the person internally? . . . After a time in the Work, if it begins to act on you, you feel far more uncomfortable through wrong feeling than through anything you may have done outwardly. The Work is not mainly about outer life, but about inner life, and here sincerity and valuation are necessary—not pious, not artificial, but genuine.

. . . You have to reach a stage in which when you are alone everyone you know, whether you dislike them or otherwise, can pass through without being sniped or butchered.” V. 2, p. 694, V. 4, p. 1355 

https://inner-world-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Gems_of_Wisdom.pdf

[Zigzag Idiot]

                                                                                  Self Remembering 

Self Remembering is a term used in the Fourth Way. It's not ever really defined in a concise way because of its all encompassing aspects when used in relation to Inquiry. Author and Fourth Way student Nicholas Tereschenko has produced a definition/pointer that's pretty good though.

"Self Remembering is the expansion of the field of consciousness, so that both the outside and inside worlds are perceived together in the unity of experience."

I think another way into the experience of Self Remembering is to just walk into an oncology wing or burn unit in a children's hospital.

[tsuki]

Your posts are uncannily timely. Thanks.

[Zigzag Idiot]

                                              Metaphor for a healthy mind - A clean empty stage 

 Almaas:
“For the process of understanding to happen, three elements need to be there at the same time. The element of disidentification is one of them, involvement is another. The third element is the quality of allowing. These elements can be there when there is harmony among the three centers—the belly center, the chest center, and the head center. When there is this harmony, it is possible to experience fully, to allow, and to disidentify. Now, what do I mean by these three elements? Each center contributes to the process of understanding. If the head center is functioning correctly, it means that space or emptiness is allowed. What is the significance of space and emptiness? Space and emptiness make possible the quality of allowing. When there is space in the mind, there is no self-image. You’re not trying to stick to something in particular. You’re not trying to go somewhere. The mind is allowing whatever is there to be there. So the head center’s participation or contribution is space, which is an allowing, a welcoming in a sense—space for things to happen without rejection, without trying to hold on. You become complete allowing. The heart center’s contribution has to do with its central quality, which is the personal essence. The contribution of the personal essence is the diving movement, the actual living of the experience. You not only allow it, you’re in the midst of it, you’re one with it. You’re really it, you let it happen, you feel it fully, you sense it fully, you experience it fully, right? That’s the contribution of the heart center. The belly center has its contribution, which is represented by the self, the essential self. The contribution of the essential self is the disidentification, the turning away. When you are truly functioning in the belly, you are completely present, and being completely present, you are being yourself. So you are not identified with the usual activity of trying to get somewhere else.”

 

[DrewNows]

Quite interesting ?❤️

[Zigzag Idiot]

@DrewNows  The quote and perspective I pasted came to mind after watching @tsuki's  last video. I found the similarities to be an affirmation of this truth. A while back I had considered a homemade practice I called 'sweeping the stage of the mind' and so this post allowed for an expression of that idea.

 

On another note:

My skillful means in communicating with others still sucks at times. I think it's safe to say that all of us are misunderstood quite often, though. In Emeralds last video she speaks about holding space for other people. The idea speaks toward having good will towards others and acting on it, especially after accessing a little more continuity of consciousness in oneself (Self Remembering). This seems to me an attribute/capability which becomes more consistent as we taste 2nd tier more.

[Zigzag Idiot]

                                                                                      Developing Will

To work on ones own capacity to do something just for the hell of it. To not need a reason and logic or emotion for initiating an act. This has been a practice of mine in the past coming from neoshamanic approach. They're called "not doing" exercises. In addition to helping develop Will, most of these practices also attack self importance.

• Each time you arrive home walk around the house three times before you enter.
• Spend a lot of time creating a piece of art. Destroy it as soon as it's finished.
• Load all your dishes, plates, bowls, glasses into the car and take them for a Sunday drive. Maybe even deliver a historical narrative concerning local landmarks as you drive past. It's no small feat to get everyone situated to where there are no rattles and everyone is secure.
• Intentionally say something stupid and shallow in a group of people. Role play an ignorant fool,,,
• Spend the first half of the day agreeing with everyone and the second half the day disagreeing with everyone.

 

 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

8:00 minutes

[tsuki]

1 hour ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

                                                                                      Developing Will

[...]

I ran across this when I was reading about chaos magic.
I was never moved to start a deliberate practice like that. Maybe I have other places to explore before?

[DrewNows]

@Zigzag Idiot love the vid, resonate with it quite strongly 

also I’ve done a few of those developing will practices on my own, but I enjoy the breaking routine sort of ideas proposed haha 

Edited June 2, 2019 by DrewNows

[Zigzag Idiot]

@DrewNows Cool. Glad to hear. I've really enjoyed the short ones Masters of Wisdom has put out lately. A lot of this stuff meshes easily with what Leo teaches. 

Im looking to resolve a possible disparity between Leo's Teaching and Gurdjieff about having a soul and eternal life. Gurdjieff says we're born with half Souls and if we don't develop/finish ,, we loose our chance. Actually 7 reincarnations I think it is. A lot of the seeming disparity may just be semetics. 

[DrewNows]

@Zigzag Idiot this is my first listening of Gurd, but I love reflecting on my own experience with any and everything new I stumble upon. Just checked out the buffers video, another spot on familiarity based off my experiences 

for a good time I had completely dreamless sleep and absolutely loved it. Funny as I had been quite the night owl with an avoidance to sleep much of life

how do their teachings resonate with you personally? (Leo and Gurd)

 

 

Edited June 2, 2019 by DrewNows

[Zigzag Idiot]

 

5 minutes ago, DrewNows said:

How do their teachings resonate with you personally

It's been rich for me.

• The ideas of being asleep through identification ,, individuals and the culture
• multiplicity of personality -- "man is Legion" from the scriptures
• Were two natured beings -- Essence which is real and personality which is false

Theres a lot more. I could go on.

It s stressed in the Teaching that if we can't verify things for ourselves,, it is of no use.

The following is a favorite of mine in how it talks about a major theme.