tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13478570326961707672024-03-13T09:09:28.242-04:00Richard Lloyd's Solasishockrlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-4438874459058044882016-10-19T11:43:00.002-04:002016-10-19T11:43:35.227-04:00Richard Lloyd's memoirsI've spent the last few months writing my memoirs which will be published late next year by beech Hill publishing, a small publishing concern based in Maine.rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-39156380867138261702016-02-23T16:07:00.002-05:002016-02-23T16:07:30.590-05:00<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><u>Poster presentation for the All and Everything conference Salem, Mass April 20-24, 2016</u></b></span></div>
<strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><b><br /><br /><br />The
Depth Of Wish<br />Paper by Richard Lloyd (c) 2016 all rights
reserved</b></u></span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /><br />Star light,
star bright,<br />first star I see tonight;<br />wish I may,
wish I might,<br />have the wish I wish tonight.</b></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br />
“</b></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Wish'
is the most powerful thing in the world. Higher than God”.</b></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br />
--- </b></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>G.I.
Gurdjieff</b></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> <br /></b></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> “T</b></span></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>he
true wish requires and even demands an emotional component. It can be
said that the true wish comes from the heart rather than the mind.
But the mechanics are as </b></span></span></span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/roger.chapman1?hc_location=ufi" target="_blank">J</a><span style="color: #3b5998;"><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>esus</b></span></span></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> declares.
The New Testament discusses this fully only calls the resultant of
wish by the word faith: "if thou had faith as large as a mustard
seed and said to the mountain,move, Then the mountain would move.</b></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>
</b></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> “</b></span></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Then
one has to think in terms of time, the supreme objective subjective –
and when one makes a true wish with conscious faith it is already in
the past, except that the past has not arisen yet – in this way it
is like a foretelling of a demanded future whereby quantum collapse
all other possibilities fall away. This is what Michelangelo meant
when he was asked how he constructed the statue David. He said "I
only took away from the marble what was not David." Wish must
operate in the same fashion.</b></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>
---Richard Lloyd<br />
---------------------------------------------------<br />
“Life is real only then, when "I am":</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Prologue:</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I am…? But what
has become of that full-sensing of the whole of myself, formally
always in me in just such cases of self questioning during the
process of self remembering….</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Is it possible that
this inner ability was achieved by me thanks to all kinds of
self-denial and frequent and self-goading only in order that now,
when it's influence for my Being is more necessary even than air, it
should vanish without a trace?</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>No! This cannot be!…</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Something here is not
right!</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>If this is true, then
everything in the sphere of reason is illogical.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>But in me is not yet
atrophied the possibility of actualizing conscious labor and
intentional suffering! …<br />According to all past events I must
still be.<br />I WISH! … And will be!!<br /><br />Moreover, my Being is
necessary not only for my personal egoism but also for the common
welfare of all humanity.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>My Being is indeed
necessary to all people; even more necessary to them than their
felicity and their happiness of today.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I WISH still to be …
I STILL
AM!<br />----------------------------------------------------------<br />This,
the beginning of the prologue of the third series ('LIFE IS REAL ONLY
THEN, WHEN 'I AM') shows just how Mr. Gurdjieff valued the idea of
Wish and in the third and fifth talks of the Third Series he speaks
more of the concept of "WISH"</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />A
New Adventure</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><b>There
is a new adventure, yet which is older than time itself, and I'm
invited to participate in it should I wish. We, have a ray of this
wish embedded in us so deeply that we languor in the forgetting of
its promise. We make our own wish at birthday time and then turn away
from its meaning with the extinguishment of the candles and return
again to a belief in the world which is trapped us.<br /><br />A friend
of mine in discussing wish said that when he was a child he
distinguished the coin of wish. He said that he knew the difference
between little wish, which cost pennies, and big wish, which may
cause more than we can pay. <br />These wishes were not entered into
lightly he said, for we have allotted to us a certain amount of wish
money (yet the exact amount is always kept hidden from us). I asked
him if there was ever a wish for which he knew he could not pay and
he said yes. He said that when he was younger he had wished to be on
a rocket ship to the moon, and as he said this to me all his cares
fell away from him, he lit up with glee and mirth and became himself
in a way which I had never seen of him, and I, in that instant knew
that this wish of his had been answered. And in that moment I also
had a wish answered, and was given a moment free of gravity, and from
Earth's laws of Encumbrance. I also left behind the shackles of
myself and my self imposed sorrow.<br /><br />Perhaps the only wish worth
the honor is that for which we have no means to pay.<br /><br />There is
a new adventure beckoning me, as old as I AM, and made of starlight.
There is a passage in "Fragments" which interests me. <br /><br />Mr.
Gurdjeff is telling Ouspensky that an order for a man to move up in
the Work you must put another man in his place, that this is a law.
<br />I had always take this to mean that one had to find another man
in order to pass on a kind of understanding but now I believe that
there is a trick being played here. How to escape the laws which bind
me here. I do not know what I have done, but I have come to be here.
The Moon and the Earth and Planets need me, demand me and will hunt
me down with redoubled efforts if I should abandon my place and try
to run. If I am to escape in this fashion another – a dummy to take
my place. <br /><br />This is the "other man" whom we must put
in our place as the Zen saying says: *“Before enlightenment chop
wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry
water". I cannot change this. But I can have wish. And I can
fashion another man, and inner man, fed by wish, and not subject to
the fears and demands of the move. For the outer man it is too late,
and has always been too late, he will always get angry, the Moon has
made him so, and he's made of dust and I cannot cling to him. But I
shall make him a shell. Empty. Slowly I shall move within my wish.
<br /><br />Slowly I shall build an ark to live in so that the waters
will not overtake me. Yet at the same time I will leave myself
exactly where I am. It is only in this way that one may pay for this
journey. This is the taking up of one's cross. This is the payment
demanded for such a wish. For one must obtain oneself at the cost of
oneself.<br /><br />My friend had forgotten how to wish. I also have
forgotten how to wish, but now I see a little, and my wish comes
back, lingers a little and fades. This is my work, to gather myself
against the tide and beckon to my wish.
</b></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /><br />------------------------------------------------------</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Third Series Talk
Three, Page 109) Mr. Gurdjieff speaking: <br /><br />“At this point,
interrupting the reader again, I continued thus:</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br />“From the
contents of the fragment which has just been read, (pages 102 –
108) each of you should already at least understand that the
indispensable condition which is first of all required from a man for
is still possible arrival on a new path, namely the path of
"evolutionary movement" is to have at least some data for
the acquisition of his own I.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>In the case of the
man in whom, because of the conditions of his preparatory age, the
time preordained by Nature for the purpose of the natural
crystallization in his common presence of data for possessing and
responsible age his own I has not been made use of, then, if at
responsible age, when in general same reasoning can sometimes be
lawfully manifested in man, he accidentally grasps this fact and
resolves to retain the possibility to be such as he ought to be in
reality, namely, to have his own individuality conditioned by the
unquestionable possession of his own I, he must for this purpose,
first of all, unfailingly and consciously begin to crystallize in
himself seven data – as was established by really wise people of
all ancient epochs – specially inherent only in man, data which
have for the quality of manifestation a reciprocal action between
themselves in complete accordance with the fundamental law of the
World, the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Today I shall speak
only about three of the seven psychic factors proper to man alone. In
the general psychic functioning of man, and certain automatically
formed or intentionally created conditions depending upon mental
associations and feeling – experiencings, these three factors
engender in the general presence of man three definite impulses.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Before continuing to
explain just what is necessary and how one must consciously, both
inwardly and outwardly, manifest oneself in order to obtain the
arising in oneself of such data inherent only in man, which ought
also to appear as lawful aspects of the whole individually of a real
man, I shall be compelled, on account of the absence in the English
language of any exact verbal designation of these three impulses, and
as a consequence the absence of an appropriate understanding of them,
to waste my time, in order to give you an approximate understanding
of them and choose for them some more or less corresponding
conventional names which we shall use in our subsequent talks.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>For an approximate
definition of the first of these three human impulses which must
arise and manifest themselves in a real man, one might employ the
English word "can," yet not in the sense in which this word
is used in the contemporary English language but in the sense in
which Englishmen used it before what is called the "Shakespearean
epoch."</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Although for the
exact definition of the second of these human impulses in the
contemporary English language there is a word, namely "WISH,"
it is nevertheless employed by you Americans as well as by the
English people themselves, only in order to very, of course
unconsciously, the degree of the expression of that so to say "lavish
impulse" for which there are, particularly in this language, a
multitude of words as, for example, "like", "want,"
"need," "desire, and so on.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>And as regards a
word for the expression and understanding of the third definite
aforementioned human impulse, in the whole lexicon of words in the
English language there cannot be found one even approximately
corresponding.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>This impulse, proper
exclusively to man can be defined in the English language only
descriptively, that is, with many words. I should define it for now
in the following words: "The entire sensing of the whole of
oneself"</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>"This third
impulse, which should be sometimes in the waking state of man, one of
certain definite manifestations in the general presence of every
normal man, is of all the seven exclusively – proper – to – man
impulses the most important, because his association with the first
two, namely those which I have already said can be approximately
expressed in English by the words "CAN" and "WISH,"
almost composes and represents the genuine I of a man who has reached
responsible age.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>It is only in a man
with such an I that these three impulses, two of which are
approximately defined in English by the words "I CAN" and I
WISH" acquire in their turn that significance which I presume;
which significance, and the corresponding force of action from their
manifestations, is obtained only in a man who by his intentional
efforts obtains the arising in himself of data for engendering these
impulses sacred for a man.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Only such a man,
when he consciously says "I AM" – he really is, "I
CAN" – he really can; I WISH" – he really wishes.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>When "I WISH"
– <i>I feel with my whole being that I wish, and can wish</i>. This
does not mean that I want, that I need, that I like or, lastly, that
I desire. No, "I WISH". --I never like, never want, I do
not desire anything and I do not need anything – all this is
slavery; if "I WISH" something, I must like it, even if I
do not like it. I can wish to like it, because "I CAN."</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I WISH – I feel with
my whole body that I WISH</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I WISH – because I
CAN WISH…" (Third Series Pages 109 – page 112 italics mine)</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>----------------------------------------------------------------------<br />The
Depth Of Wish:</b></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>As human beings, we are
each endowed with the same organic format and limitations,</b></span> <strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the
result of being living, physical creatures who breath and eat and
think</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. We take in food and air
and sensations, we excrete behavior and </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>we
have an inner life</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. In this inner
life are thoughts and desires; </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>unspoken
and even unconscious urges</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. What is
the nature of wish? What is the meaning of this action within us
which can be stronger than hope?</b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Where
in our </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">inner nature is the
platform upon which we can examine the nature and meaning of WISH</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
which seems so fleeting against the mundane world, and what happens
in each of us as our ability to WISH is tempered by the facts of
material existence?<br /><br />One may speak of dreams, of innermost
desires; of the deepest longing of the heart; </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>even
when crushed by the </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">weight
and gravity of our ordinary existence </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>these
longings still have the power to </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>renew
us</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>; to surge forgotten energies
within us; to cause us once again to fall in love, not with any other
person, or even with ourselves, but </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>with
an idea, </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">with a hope of the
unrealized potential within us</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
When we wish; when we truly come to recognize that within us as a
WISH (and not simply a made up desire or objective, but </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>a
surge towards a longing </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>which lives
an independent existence from us), then </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>for
that moment we </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">open to a life
which is ordinarily denied us</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
and we have access to a power that </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>can
organize us into wholeness</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, and which
can move mountains on our behalf. Even if only for this reason and no
other, we owe a debt to ourselves to </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>go
within and search for </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the
meaning of WISH</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.<br /><br />All myths
and fairy stories contain tantalizing remembrances that there is
within us </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the hope of a primordial
connection with one's wish </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>and of the
realization of one's destiny. Destiny; </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>as
opposed to fate; as opposed to conscious intent</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>;
destiny as the unfolding of the greatest of possibilities out of the
unformed potentialities contained within a given life. This is why
the image of the genie, the fairy godmother or the wizard are such
profound symbols of how the </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">deepest
inner wish in a person </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>can be
independent of all of the actualized aspects of a person, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>or
the true wish </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">comes to us
from an entirely other level</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
This also points to the reason why the true wish can never be
mistaken with simple desire or objectives which may be
self-realizable. The creative force always irrupts into consciousness
from a level outside of it. This is why </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
wish has power </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">at the same
time </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>that it is disregarded
in ordinary life</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, because the wish
can only await its actualization, and can never "do." This
also means that one cannot </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>influence
the wish in any ordinary way</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. Yet
wish is strongly differentiated from hope, which contains within its
jurisdiction the element of happenstance, upon which we may rest our
hope. Wish, on the other hand, does all, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>contains
within itself </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">all authority
for what is to be</span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, and yet
"does" nothing</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.<br /><br />What
is the goal of wish? There are </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>many
levels </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>upon which wishing may be said
to reside. There is the wish blown </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>upon
the </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>birthday </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>candle</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
The wish sent with a coin </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>into the
fountain</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. There are the </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>teaching
wishes granted </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>by the Jinn, where </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
fallacious nature of desire is revealed </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>by
the foolhardy wishes of the recipient and where the last of the
granted wishes is almost </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>always a
fervent plea to </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">return to the
state which existed before </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
wishes had been granted</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, but which
can bring at the end </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>a hard won
maturity</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. There is a coin of wish,
and all know that the spending of this coin can be </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>foolish
or wise</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. There are the unrealizable
wishes, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>verging on fantasy</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
but which can still be perhaps </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>amongst
</b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the wisest of purchases</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
For those who dare to wish to fly to the moon or to have secret
powers of wisdom, perhaps the wish </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>pays
its dividends in </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">unearthed
energies and ideas leading to invention</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
At the very least, the fabulous and sweeping wish which is </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>scarcely
to be expected </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>brings within it </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>a
delicious inner thrill</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, and it is a
sad thing that so many have forgotten its delights.<br /><br />As to </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the
highest wish in a person</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
"true wish" and its goal</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
this goal is much further and has a much more concrete form. All
myths and fairy tales suggest that one can </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">exert
no influence </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>whatsoever over
the form of this wish </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(although one
may "blunder" into the formation of the actualization of
one's wish, when all of the normal avenues for the attainment of
one's desires are paused, or disabled, and </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>usually
through the innate "goodness" of one's heart </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>or
essential nature -- which is the part closest to power in wishing).
Power in wishing must be bestowed upon one, and not always by overtly
beneficent forces. There is the tradition that </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>bestowed
power to wish is almost always a test</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
which not so much separates good from evil but that </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>separates
the innermost essential in one from everything else</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
Tradition holds that any wish other than one </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">connected
to the essential treasure </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>of
the heart</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> (and which also moves
one in the direction of one's hidden destiny) will be a wish that
will bring a dismantling of elements within the self which are false.
The false wish, when it comes true, brings decay which is objectively
speaking healthy and true, like a pull upon the reins of the wayward
horse. Only elements which do not belong to the true and essential
self may be ruptured in this way. The Alchemical axiom is: "</b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">gold
does not fear the fire</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>," but
for those upon whom this wish is bestowed, the event is one of </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">a
preternatural winnowing fire </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>out
of which none but the purest intention can emerge unscathed.<br /><br />In
my own case I was born with a certain gnosis such that when I was
asked at the age of five if I believed in God I answered, "no I
know." This cause the adults some consternation and they asked
me what I meant by this hominim. I said that I did not need to
believe because I knew, and that knowledge trumps belief, which
belief depends upon the hope and faith of something unseen whereas
knowledge is an immediate apperception of the truth.<br /><br />I also
trusted and felt that like the mother is given a baby shower with
gifts before the child is born, that one's guardian angels and
forebears and archangels may also give the child what I will term
"wish money", and may even put wish money in a trust fund
that will bear fruit later in life. For this reason I did not want to
spend any of my wish money on frivolous things and during my third
birthday when they brought the cake out and my mother asked me to
make a wish and blow out the candles I said “No”<br />she pleaded
with me but I still told is not going to make a wish and blow out the
candles and that I had nothing to wish for – that I was housed,
fed, clothed, and loved, and that I needed nothing further. Finally
she pleaded with me and said that I did not have to tell anyone my
wish, so I thought for a moment and came up with a wish that was
proper and blew out the candles, wishing that everyone else present
would get their wish and that if I benefited it would be collateral.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Later, as a teenager
growing up in the 1960s I made my first wish: that I should become a
world-renowned electric guitar player and have an irrevocable impact
on the history of rock 'n roll. I gave everything over to this wish,
even making a pact with lady poverty and throwing myself on the mercy
of the Holy Ghost to fulfill my wish. Instantly I knew that it would
come true and so I began speaking in the future tense as the present
tense. This is difficult to explain but people would ask me what I
wanted to be when I grew up and I would tell them that I will already
was what I wanted to be when I grew up and that was as stated above –
a renowned electric guitar player who makes an irrevocable impact on
rock 'n roll history. This got a lot of laughs but my wish was formed
and never changed. <br /><br />I recognized that once one made a true
wish the deal was sealed and as Mr. Gurdjieff says, when asked his
definition of the word serious that "to be serious means to be
serious about your aim or wish and that without an aim nothing is
serious. Anything that hinders you towards reaching your goal or
helps you to reach your goal is serious, AND NOTHING ELSE!" <br /><br />So
for me I lived in a divine comedy where everything that happened to
me was predicated on reaching this aim goal or wish all of which I
consider to be the same thing. I knew a great deal about yoga and
there is something to be said regarding it and the wish fulfilling
tree at the base of which is an altar upon which is your chosen deity
and your fondest wish and your most serious obligation in life. <br />As
Mr. Gurdjieff implied that the word wish in modern English does not
connote the meaning that he meant to convey I should say that I
believe that the impulse of wish must be combined with intention and
the force of the will. Without this confluence of three forces –
Wish – Intention – Will, to the exclusion of all other interests
then this wish will not come true just as Mr. Gurdjieff stated that
most petitionary prayers do not even reach the roof of the church,
and what is a petitionary prayer but a wish placed in the lap of a
higher power that more than likely has better things to do. No, we
are responsible for the actions needed to be taken in our intentions
and will for the wish to be brought to fruition. The entire cosmos
and reality will conform itself to such a wish irrevocably.<br /><br />In
the archetypal chakra system of Kundalini yoga there exist two minor
chakras near the heart which are forbidden as objects of meditation.
In English these chakras are named respectively '</b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the
wish granting tree</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>' and '</b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the
seat of unutterable anguish</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.'
These two chakras are considered to be sister and brother, and one
may not be opened without opening the other. At the base of the wish
granting tree is an altar upon which is placed the deepest wish of
the self. </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>This wish is placed upon
this altar </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">prior to the
birth</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. Any other wish placed upon
this altar is considered a desecration and a rape of the sister by
the brother. He then comes to the rescue of the sister and cuts down
the tree, and if the chakra is opened duplicitously, the brother in
his wrath </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">opens and reveals </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
sacred conscience</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. In the hidden and
apocryphal legends of Jesus it is said that both of these chakras in
him were fully open, which is why he was said to be a man "well
acquainted with sorrows." The idea in Buddhism of the
bodhisattva or perfected being who remains on the earthly plane in
order to support the salvation of others is also connected with these
two chakras and their opening. When the chakra of </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
wish granting tree is opened and </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">the
Great Self receives its wish</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, it
also receives the deep and penetrating realization of the plight and
inner state of others via the brother. Of these two chakras, it is
forbidden to say more.<br /><br />Now, for those who have come to
</b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">recognize their wish</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
the journey towards its </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>fulfillment </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>is
an odyssey of epic proportions. Against this truth every man is the
hero, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>set upon the </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">seven
voyages</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, or demanded to </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>fulfill
</b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">twelve tasks </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>and
to return with a proof </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">not
given lightly</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. Almost always
mythical forces are set against this adventure; the </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>dragons
of the unconscious </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>guarding the
precious treasure. For one who is set out on such a quest, tradition
allots years of search for guidance, and a journey of unimaginable
distances through </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>dark and dangerous
places</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. One's own resources are never
equal to the task, and therefore must come a </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>search
for tools </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>with which to perform the
tasks which are strewn </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>against the
intent</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, and which almost in every
case cause the supplicant to detour, and to undertake Herculean tasks
which </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>on the surface seem to have no
connection to the goal</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. Thus, one on
such a mission seems to the outside observer perhaps to be headed in
wrong direction, and even to seem the dolt or idiot. On top of this
is the fact that these </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>tasks are
usually formulated to be well </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">beyond
the ken of the seeker </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>and cut
perpendicular to their strengths and abilities and requiring the
assistance of </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">magical elements </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>and
of a guiding guardianship</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. But the
true seeker after his wish </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>has in all
cases magic in his pocket, a </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">compass
or lodestone which guides him unerringly </span></strong><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>towards
his goal</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. All the rest move like
lemmings convinced of their direction while the seeker after the </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>true
wish of the heart moves in a direction </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">wholly
opposite to expectations</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.<br /><br />But
in our world, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>legend and myth and
fairy story are relegated to childhood</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>,
and so with wish. We ask our children to wish, but not ourselves. We
remind </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>each other to wish </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>on
the birthday candles </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">but have
forgotten why</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. We throw coins in
the fountain but we do not mean it, and which of us would dream of
wishing on a star in any seriousness? What has happened to us? Not
only has our power to wish withered but even our recognition of its
power. </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>We relegate wish to the purview
of the naive</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. And yet we hear the
words: "lest ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise
see the kingdom" and do not take them to heart. Are these words
of fiction? While we consider that we live our lives in fact, richly
or poorly, it may be that our lives pour out from underneath us. The
idea of a study of the meaning of wish should be </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>far
from trivial</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>; but we will have to
walk backwards, working ourselves </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>out
of the disarray and complications </b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>we
find ourselves in, {and </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">return to
simplicity </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>in order to find it.
In this place of simplicity we can again </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">pick
up the thread of wish </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>and follow
it home, to the land of make-believe, where anything is possible and
where nothing yet has happened. Perchance we may then again </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>find
our forgotten true </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">wish, and
begin again</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.<br /><br />Some time ago
I took a survey asking various acquaintances what their ideas
regarding wish had been when they were children and now, as adults.
The wishes took many forms. Some came true and some did not. There
seemed to be an intuitive inner understanding that a c</b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>ertain
coin of </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">wish is given to each
of us </span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>to spend, and like the
child in front of a selection of candy, we ponder our choices, we
take aim with our hopes and at last, we </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">let
fly with our desire</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. Once having
made our wish we wait, curious but certain of a power having been
loosed and certain of a response from the universe. We can still do
that. One person told me this: that when he was young he had been
careful not to spend his wishes foolishly, but </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>there
came in time to him a wish that was simply stated, preposterous</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.
Because the wish was an impossible one, he told me that he knew that
he could make this wish without fear of spending his precious wish
money. As he told me of his wish, </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>the
impossible </b></span></em><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">wish of a child's
heart</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>, his face softened and his
shoulders relaxed. His eyes began to twinkle and moisten and he began
to laugh. As I saw this change come over him what I saw was this:
that </b></span><em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>he became more himself and less
the trappings of life</b></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>. He became
younger in fact before my eyes, years peeling away as he remembered,
and I knew in my heart what I told him then, that the impossible had
worked its magic. That the wish itself held the power he had been
looking for, and that </b></span><strong><span style="font-size: medium;">his wish had
in fact, come
true</span></strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>.<br />---------------------------------------------------------<br />The
English word wish is derived from the Proto-IndoEuropean language
root 'wen,' which translates as "to desire, to strive for."
Closely related, and from the same root is the modern English word
'win,' to win. In old English the word Wynn means pleasure, joy, and
the old English word 'wenan' means to expect, imagine, think. The old
English word for wish is actually wyscan. The origin and development
of human language as a means of expression is deeply shrouded in
mystery, and the study of the source and meanings of even a single
letter can provide rich nourishment in the search for understanding,
often offering multiple lateral avenues for exploration. The fact
that sounds uttered by the human voice can convey density of meaning
via metaphor, allegory and veiled allusion should rightly return us
to a state of awe at the original mystical nature of our very
existence. The word wish contains three basic sound components: 'W',
'ie' and 'sh'. Each of these phonemes can be examined individually
into search for depths of meaning concealed within the compound sound
group which makes up its word.<br /><br />The 'W,' is a letter
derived from 'V,' or 'U,' hence double 'U.' It comes from the Semitic
'vau,' meaning nail. The 'V' contains the idea of identity, of point,
and the double 'U' connotes the image of relationship, of I and you,
or I and thou. Thus the words 'womb,' 'woman,' 'with.' In the quality
of its sound is a wooing. A pulling, an asking, like the sound of a
wind instrument, deep and vibratory (as against the 'K' or labial 'L'
for instance). Thus the questioning words: 'who,' 'when,' 'why,'
'where,' 'what.' In its representation of the doubling of 'V,' we
have the idea of twisting or turning back upon itself; bringing us
the words 'weave,' 'whirl,' 'worry' and 'world.' One could continue
and exploration of the hidden and primeval meanings of the 'W' sound
in words like 'word,' 'wise,' 'wife,' 'warm,' etc.<br /><br />The second
letter in wish is the vowel 'I,' sounding 'ie.' This letter comes
from the Semitic 'Yod,' meaning hand. The hand is the human tool for
grasping; for making connections and the 'I' as a vowel sound form
stands for a connectivity, the binding. It is the center vowel in the
vowel series AEIOU. In this central position it embodies the idea of
developing and maintaining a connective relationship. Consider the
identification we have with the body and with the thinking which is
represented by this letter as a personal pronoun. Also, the 'I' can
serve as a balance between two ideas as a fulcrum and as a mechanism
of joining, as in the suffix 'ing' and as the 'i' in semi
circle.<br /><br />Finally, the last two letters, 'S' and 'H' together
make up one phoneme, 'sh.' The 'S' is derived from the Semitic
'shin,' which means tooth. It was originally pictured on its side,
which can give the image of the teeth. It is used in this sense of
the wave in the words 'snake,' 'shape,' 'smooth.' This consonant is
generative, standing for the sexual power. For this reason adding an
's' at the end of a word plurals it, multiplying, as in 'senses,'
'eggs,' 'brains'. The "S' stands for the teeth, the instruments
whereby food is taken into oneself, whereby the food is divided and
possessed. It is hot and sensual as in 'hiss'. The 'H' is from the
Hebrew 'Cheth,' which stands for fence. This is like two 'I's
connected, but enclosed. If is a frame which prevents the passing of
energies. It is close in meaning to the numeral '8' stands for
infinity when placed upon its side, because the energies on either
side of it are made to circulate rather than dissipate. This 'H,'
this fence at the end of 'wish,' helps to secure its power and serves
as a kind of hermetic seal upon the word.</b></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>From the third series
(LIFE IS REAL ONLY THEN, WHEN 'I AM”) 5th talk:</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Page 135: Gurdjieff
speaking:<br /><br />“First of all, concentrate the greater part of
your attention on the words themselves, "I am," and the
lesser part concentrate on the solar plexus, and the reverberation
should gradually proceed of itself</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>at first it is
necessary to acquire only, so to say, the "taste" of these
impulses which you have not as yet in you, and which for the present
you may designate merely by the words "I am," "I
can,", I wish"</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I am, I can, I am
can</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I am, I wish, I am wish
<br />In concluding my elucidation's of this assisting exercise </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>I will once more
repeat, but in another formulation, what I have already said.</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br />“If "I am,"
only then "I can; if "I can";<br />only then do I
deserve and have the objective right to wish</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Without the ability to
"can" there is no possibility of having anything; </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>no, nor the right to
it.</b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>First we must
assimilate these expressions as external designations of these
impulses in order ultimately to have the impulses
themselves.<br />------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />it
now becomes clear what Mr. Gurdjieff meant when he says that wish is
more powerful than God. From the Holy Sun Absolute God's three laws
proceed into the world three, but after that they become mechanical
more and more as they become branches on the Ray of Creation, like a
tree planted upside down where each branch is a galaxy and each twig
a solar system and each fruit a planet, and upon the planets are
beings serving the higher nature of the great cosmic
Trogoautoegocrat. (By eating myself I myself govern). But from lower
levels such as we are on we can only touch upon the force of creation
by a kind of levitation; and levitation from the negativity which
usually plagues us, and the reaching of a higher place in ourselves
where we can wish, where we are in contact with both forces above and
below us and in our conduit of information we can make actual changes
in the world that cannot be made horizontally. I believe that this is
what wish ultimately consists of – the miracle of a higher law
manifestation itself in a lower level. <br /><br />As Mme. de Salzmann
has said, "We cannot do it, but it cannot be done without us."
This makes our wishes far more powerful than our prayers of
supplication, because wish is active whereas prayer is passive. I was
for all of those who follow Mr. Gurdjieff in good conscious faith
hope and love to come to this understanding that their wishes are all
powerful – more powerful than the so-called reality we believe in.
This is not magical thinking of the child but the magical thinking
that is true for the adult who has gained maturity while retaining
that childlike wonder and awe at the enormous banquet of creativity
which surrounds us. Blessings be unto thee.<br /><br />Bibliography:<br /><br />The
Grimm's Fairy Tales<br />Kundalini For The West <br />The Serpent Power –
Sir Arthur Avalon<br />Life Is Real Only Then, When "I Am" -
G. I. Gurdjieff<br />A Mystical Key To The English Language - Robert M.
Hoffstein <br />Internet: Notable quotes<br />The New Testament of The
Bible<br />Internet: Zen Quotes<br />All And Everything – G.I Gurdjieff</b></span></div>
rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-2519970346986594282016-02-03T19:08:00.001-05:002016-02-03T19:08:02.187-05:00richard lloyd get off of my cloud movie<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ro0xpfo5cLY" width="459"></iframe>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-5174540584877487792015-02-24T03:44:00.001-05:002015-02-24T03:44:40.877-05:00Puddles of Myself: The Alternate Life of Jimi Hendrix, Part 2<a href="http://www.puddlesofmyself.com/2013/03/the-alternate-life-of-jimi-hendrix-part_22.html?showComment=1424767452186#c6957472743543324502">Puddles of Myself: The Alternate Life of Jimi Hendrix, Part 2</a>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-41945658709842969662015-02-13T18:23:00.001-05:002015-02-13T18:23:07.064-05:00Intrinsic Virtue and scale of emotions use of organism energy.<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b> "Intrinsic Virtue". It Is Topped with a Plant Growing Straight, over an Eye Which Sees, Over a Heart.</b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b>--------------------------------------------------------------------</b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b>This does not just mean virtue as in morals or ethics, but something far more intimate – more intrinsic. One could say the even a chair has intrinsic virtue if when you sit in it it doesn't crumble and leave you sitting on the floor amidst the rubble. The chair itself could be said to have intrinsic virtue, just as a pencil has intrinsic virtue if it is filled with graphite with which to write, and allows one to sharpen – that is also part of its intrinsic virtue. Everything and every creature except for man has within itself an intrinsic virtue. Animals only kill to eat or to defend themselves and only man suffers from greed and selfishness.</b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b>In one ancient tradition of Man – he is likened unto a Nail, which is worthless unless it holds 2 other things together, like pieces of wood – and is useless if it is spent such that you cannot utilize it. Unfortunately most men are bent nails unable to hold together Heaven and Earth, which requires living a vertical life as well is a horizontal one. I have a saying: "Gravity Does Not Just Affect the Body – It Also Affects the Emotions and the Mind".</b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b>When a man wakes up his body arises to become vertical in the spine, but like the spinal discs that can be squashed and herniated horizontally, his emotions and mental processes are busy being squashed by gravity such that he thinks about the day to come for the day just past or the nightmares or dreams that he has had but he does not live in the present moment between the immediate 2nd just past and the immediate 2nd about to come, which would be the eternal Now. Time is nothing but a stubborn illusion because all things both in the future and past and in the now coexists simultaneously. If you want to change the past or affect the future you must do it in the now. The 1st word of the Scripture considered the Bible of consciousness: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, is ATHA!!!, Which means such an emphatic now, that it produces a stop on thinking emoting and movement – the 3 forms of our 3 main brains. Man is a 3 brained being, but imagine the shape of each of these brains. The body looks like the body, but to the emotions resemble a human being?</b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
<b>I dare say that the emotional center in the ordinary human being looks like an amorphious glob of negativity, hopes and desires and fears and aversions. The real emotional center should take the same shape as the human body only it should reach out further, radiating compassion love and indifference. Compassion for all living things; love to all things and and indifference to those who practice injustice or who suffer by their own doings. Perhaps a more proper to say that things happen through the ordinary man, who is like a man on iceberg with one oar 2 things she can determine the direction the iceberg is going by paddling in the water while not realizing that most of them (the icebergs) are 9/10 underwater and subject to deep ocean currents that go where they will – not where he wants them to go. But for a man with intrinsic virtue the iceberg will follow his intent, for there is an alchemical axiom that goes as follows: </b></div>
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<b>"Where the Intent Goes, the Life Force Follows; where the Life Force goes, the Blood goes and Sinks and Relaxes"</b></div>
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<b>But the intent is directly connected with intrinsic virtue or lack thereof. In the scale of emotional force there would be a step ladder from the very top where all energy is available and non-is used to the very bottom where all energy is locked up in horrible emotions that cannot be overcome, leading to death. This step ladder might be considered to exist in the following terms:</b></div>
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<b>Peace – All Energy No Expenditure</b></div>
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<b>Bliss – peace with Enjoyment Beyond Description </b></div>
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<b>Awareness – Seeing but without Expenditure</b></div>
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<b>Action – Courageousness proaction in exactly the right proportion in a state of total relaxation. </b></div>
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<b>this is the end of the positive emotions that we know of in our ordinary state of being.</b></div>
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<b>Pride – One Can Only Be Proud of Something in the past – Never of Something in the Future; Therefore "Pride Cometh before the Fall."</b></div>
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<b>Anger – A Response to the Thwarting of One's Will. This Can Be Transmitted It into Real Force without Identification.</b></div>
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<b>Lust – A Response To Something Desired or Desirable. Action May or May Not Take Place. </b></div>
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<b>Fear – The Most Prevalent Demotion in Ordinary Man, It Prevents Him from Acting and Causes Them to Be Eternally Vigilant and Suspicious. It Is Only an Appropriate Emotion When Confronted with a Threat to the Safety of the Organism. </b></div>
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<b>Grief – A Deep Sense of Sorrow Due To a Great Personal Loss – There Are 2 Aspects to Grief – One Is the Grief One Feels for the Lost Opportunities Of the Future but the Larger Part is Usually Self-Pity.</b></div>
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<b>Apathy -- Such a Plethora of Negative Emotions One upon Another That There Is No Possibility of Movement. Deep Apathy Leads Next to Catatonia. Below Catatonia Is Coma </b></div>
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<b>Coma – This can have Both Positive and Negative Aspects. It Can Occur As a Response to Such an Overwhelming Force of Threat of the Organisms Imminent Death That the Body Shuts down Everything except That Which Is Necessary to Live; or It Can Be the Results of the Buildup of Negative Emotions Leading to Coma through Catatonia.</b></div>
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<b>Below This There Is Only:</b></div>
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<b>Death – The Cessation of Breathing and Blood Circulation Leading to a Disassemblence Of Parts, With Each Part Going to Its Own Level. The Body Goes into the Earth Or Is Turned into Ash and Smoke, While the Emotions Join the Atmosphere Where They Are Subject to Weather Just As They Were When the Body Was Alive. The Thinking Mind Disintegrates Except for the Aspects of the Will Which Are Passed on to Others in a Kind of Supernatural Disclosure of Talents, Powers and Positive Emotional Contents. The Highest Part of the Mind Returns to Space, Which Is Its Natural Home.</b></div>
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<b>Anyone who reads either of the books of the dead will see that my analysis is true.</b></div>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-45051670922633218082014-08-26T01:10:00.000-04:002014-08-26T01:10:08.491-04:00Teachings of The Buddha and The Teachings of Gurdjieff.<br />
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If I may, I would like to point out some considerable differences between Mr. Gurdjieff and the Buddha, both in their actions and in their teachings.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">First I should talk about the Buddha, whose name was </span>Siddhārtha Gautama. When he was born his father who was a ruler of a small kingdom had an astrologer throw his horoscope which told that Siddhartha could have either of two paths in life; either he would be a great political king or or he would become a great spiritual teacher.</div>
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His father, wanting to install him as his heir, had a large wall built around the entire palace, which saved Siddhartha from viewing any of the world's calamities. After he was married and had a child, he became curious and snuck out and had his charioteer drive him through town. First he saw a leper, and couldn't understand until his charioteer explained that he had a terrible disease. Then he came across a man tattered in rags who was begging. Again, always having plenty, Siddhartha needed the charioteer to explain poverty. They passed a prostitute cutting a deal with a customer, and again, the charioteer had to explain that man had vices which needed gratification. Everywhere he looked he saw suffering, and decided that he would run away from the palace and seek a solution to this pervasive unhappiness which seemed to run the world.</div>
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After kissing his wife and son, he climbed over the wall never to return. He traded his valuable clothing for the vestments of a "forest dweller" and obtained a begging bowl, and began to practice yoga and visiting holy men and listening to their various teachings. He gathered a group of about five other young man who practiced very strenuous austerities for several years. At the end of 5 years, and dying of starvation, Siddhartha separated from his friends and allowed himself to be nurtured back to health by a woman who spent 6 weeks feeding him and tending to his sores and self-inflicted wounds, which the group had decided would aid them in their aim of release from suffering and the attainment of permanent bliss.</div>
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Siddhartha, soon to be the Buddha, found a nice Bodhi tree to rest his back against and to begin his contemplations. The first question he asked himself was if he could remember a time when he was perfectly happy. In fact, he remembered himself sitting under a similar tree when he was nine years old with no unhappiness in him to be found. Instead he found four virtues that arose within him and radiated outward, having no outward cause:</div>
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Buddhism's four <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara"><span style="color: #0446ad;"><i>brahmavihara</i></span></a> ("Divine States") can be more properly regarded as virtues in the European sense. They are:</div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1px;"><span style="color: #0446ad;"> 1 Metta/</span>Maitri: loving-kindness towards all; the hope that a person will be well; loving kindness is <i>"the wish that all sentient beings, without any exception, be happy.</i></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1px;"><span style="color: #0446ad;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karu%E1%B9%87%C4%81">Karuṇā</a></span>: compassion; the hope that a person's sufferings will diminish; compassion is the <i>"wish for all sentient beings to be free from suffering."</i><span style="color: #0446ad; font-size: 11px;">[8]</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1px;"><span style="color: #0446ad;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudita">Mudita</a></span>: altruistic joy in the accomplishments of a person, oneself or other; sympathetic joy - <i>"the wholesome attitude of rejoicing in the happiness and virtues of all sentient beings."</i></li>
<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 1px;">Upekkha/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upeksa"><span style="color: #0446ad;">Upeksha</span></a>: equanimity, or learning to accept both loss and gain, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise"><span style="color: #0446ad;">praise</span></a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame"><span style="color: #0446ad;">blame</span></a>, success and failure with detachment, equally, for oneself and for others. Equanimity means <i>"not to distinguish between friend, enemy or stranger, but to regard every sentient being as equal. It is a clear-minded tranquil state of mind - not being overpowered by delusions, mental dullness or agitation."</i><span style="color: #0446ad; font-size: 11px;">[</span></li>
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Siddhartha also came to the realization that all existence experiences suffering, but by practicing these four virtues so that nothing is based on impressions coming from the outside, but that these virtues are inherent and invested in the human being, they may be radiated outwardly in all directions, thus bringing happiness, joy, bliss and contentment.</div>
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The Buddha, as he was now known, is directly translatable from the Pali or Sanskrit as "One Who Is Awake", being derived from the root "Chitta", which is most simply translated as awareness. There is an apocryphal story of the other Gurus who were losing students to the Buddha going to him and ask him a series of questions:</div>
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" Are you a God?" Reply: "No" </div>
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“Are you an Avatar? (An incarnation of an attribute of the Godhead). Reply: “No" </div>
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“Are you then a Saint?" Reply: “No”</div>
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“What are you then, that all our disciples are flocking to you and abandoning us?”</div>
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Reply: “I AM ONE WHO IS AWAKE”. This is the literal transliteration of the word Buddha into English.</div>
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The significant difficulty I find in the Buddhas subsequent teachings is that he advocated what he called “The Middle Way", Containing 8 Right Methods such as “right vocation, right this, right that and so on–right attitude etc.</div>
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But this is not the path that the Buddha himself took. He may have thought that he was doing his disciples a favor by giving them a shortcut past the austerities, and studies and yoga, and this is where the Buddha and myself find ourselves separating paths.</div>
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Now let's study the path of Mr. Gurdjieff. It also recognizes that all of existence is suffering, but instead of radiating happiness right off the bat (when we probably can't really find any within ourselves), he advocates studying ourselves as we actually are without changing anything except to look, through a separation of an acting self and a witnessing self. </div>
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And he claims that this seeing of ourselves as we actually are, while deconstructing the imaginary perfect self which we have generated in our ability to lie to ourselves and hopefully to other people; he claims that this seeing, which he equates to light, produces changes–real chemical changes in the structuring of the organism. In its blood will change the hormones and neurotransmitters. It also brings the clarity of our own suffering of ourselves as we actually into a focus which attenuates or ceases the sieve - like leaking of energies which we need for our work, but which otherwise are squandered–wasted.</div>
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Even though the Buddha never advocated that there is no real Self (the doctrine of annata) but only constituent desires and aversions, Nirvana does not translate as “nonexistence”. Nirvana directly translates into English as “No Wind”, meaning that the authentic individual Self is no longer subject to any Push or Pull from the outer world and its sense–objects. It is the exact same thing as Carl Jung's </div>
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"Individuation" or Gurdjiefff's "Higher being Bodies".</div>
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However, in Mr. Gurdjieff cosmogony he is closer to Orthodox Esoteric Christianity than to any other belief system, agreeing with St. Paul's assessment that the entire Creation as from the beginning until now, has groaned as if in the sufferings the pangs of childbirth, eagerly awaiting the birth of the sons of men"</div>
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The "Sons of Men" being a highly charged phrase, essentially meaning the perfect man such as the Adam Kadmon, or Christ Jesus, and Gurdjieff not only advocates a conscious and laborious suffering of oneself without any illusions, vanity, or self–love, but he places in the teachings of Ashiata Shiemash what are known as the "Five Strivings", which place man in a position of responsibility not only to himself and his physical well-being, but to the promise of an endless study of the laws which govern Creation, as well as being willing and able to shoulder some of the Suffering of the Creator himself, and thereby lightening his burden.</div>
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And the last or 5th striving brings us human beings into a relationship of reciprocal help, to attain the necessary degree of objective reasoning which would allow us to serve the needs of each other at the same time as shouldering some of the burden of the creator. Mr. Gurdjieff lays great emphasis on utilizing consciousness to unearth the divine spark of conscience which lay embedded in our subconscious and unconscious parts, having been covered over by the incredibly incorrectly named “education”, which has more to do with babysitting and surrogate parenting with no harmonious educational aim having been designed, and leaving the children to learn useless competition with no moral rectitude.</div>
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Whereas Buddhism acknowledges all existence as forms of suffering, in its dogma of the “4 Noble Truths” It alleges that this suffering can be attenuated and eliminated through the following activities:</div>
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1): all existence is suffering</div>
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2): it is craving disguised as desire or aversion which create this suffering.</div>
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3): suffering can be alleviated by renouncing craving, desire or aversions</div>
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4): cessation of suffering is accomplished by 8 noble paths, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.</div>
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Mr. Gurdjieff, on the other hand, advocates intentional or volitional suffering, and relates trying to avoid suffering as simply another mechanical suffering which intensifies this suffering itself, which being mechanical, it is quite useless.</div>
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He advocates conscious labors and intentional sufferings as a methodology for increasing consciousness so that it renders the subconscious and unconscious to a retrieval of conscience, which Gurdjieff defines as a spark of the Divine Creator Father Endlessness. Gurdjieff is very careful to delineate ordinary conscience, which is changeable in different cultures, and which is also malleable, with true conscience, which is the same in all men – the surety of what is right and wrong.</div>
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While Gurdjieff does not describe consciousness as a light switch, but rather in degrees or along the lines of a rheostat, conscience never changes. Being divine in origin, it participates in the certainty of creation itself and the phenomenological Cosmos we find ourselves in.</div>
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In addition, Gurdjieff describes the conscience of the common or ordinary man as one which is filthy, taken for granted and abused. It thus needs cleansing, and Mr. Gurdjieff hints that a man with a clean conscience can experience all of his emotions at once, with no buffers between opposites, and which open the flood gates of positive emotions, which have no opposites. So that in fact, the beginning of the work being on self observation and self remembering and enlarging the faculties of consciousness are all designed for the single purpose of retrieving and cleansing the true conscience which exists in all men except those unfortunates who have either sullied their own conscience, or as sociopaths, have an atrophied or dead conscience, so that these what are called Hasmanuss (several languages together which roughly translate as "Soul of Shit") have lost their chance at rehabilitation altogether.</div>
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When Mr. Gurdjieff talked about conscience he stated that the possibilities for mankind are nearly unbelievable, because whereas consciousness can the horizontal, conscience is nearly always vertical and acts as a conduit for signals and instructions and revelations from above, which begin to set the man's house in order. The house is given him so long as he cares for it as though it were belonging to some far more important person who, being away on business, has left the house and equipage (horse and buggy) in the care of this servant.</div>
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Whereas all the major spiritual dispensations which have emerged during the history of mankind, all of them, with perhaps the goals of Buddhism, have recognized that human beings are rightfully servants; whether of above or below matters not. What is important is to recognize our servitude and the existence of absolute and permanent abiding RELATIONSHIP in creation. Everything in CREATION IS IN RELATIONSHIP,</div>
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RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP</div>
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THE SOONER WE LEARN THIS FACT THE BETTER THE EARTH WILL BE.</div>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-6992072199036318672014-06-17T22:34:00.002-04:002014-06-17T22:34:54.765-04:00Kundalini and Gurdjieff Foundation<div class="_38 direction_ltr">
<span class="null">Thank you,
and all the other members who have followed our exchanges and my
dedication to keeping both the Sheep and the Wolf alive and well in
myself. I was extremely fortunate in that my 1st group had both the male
and female in the position of group leaders where the man may be the
strongest Man I have ever met in the work.<br />
This was a man who had
been with the New York Gurdjeff Foundation since 1952, but whereas it
seems that most of the teachers of the work followed a path into
complete softness in their worship of Mme. de Salzmann who, it must be
said, was a woman of enormous BEING and did as Mr. Gurdjeff instructed
her, but she was also very clear in stating in the very beginning of her
efforts to bring all of the conflicting lineages together under one
umbrella that she stated: "I can only take you as far as I have come."<br />
She
achieved a phenomenal success, and one of the things I have learned is
that in beginning the New York Foundation she formed a secret group
which very few people even today know about to continue the line of
esoteric inner work that Mr. Gurdjeff disseminated in an esoteric group
he held for the 6 years before his death. Mme. De Salzmann, considering
the future of the work and the pleading of the elders in the work for
her to impart this final stage of Mr. Gurdjeff teaching career, that
there was a secret meeting held once a week for a couple of years and
nothing about it ever leaked. It is in fact a marvel that I have
discovered that it existed. But most people who develop a strong
interest in Mr. Gurdjeff's teachings do not come as though they had
lived his teachings their entire life, as I found that I had.<br />
I
joined with the New York Gurdjeff foundation for 3 reasons – 1st,
because every book written about his work declared that a man must place
his own will under the will of another or of a group which has a
stronger will than his. I don't think I ever met anyone with a stronger
will than my own, which was formed by my own intentional sufferings to
the point of death fearlessly and continuously as well as never, ever
doing as others did. I thought of the mass of humanity as though they
were an entire world full of lemmings so that when they went one way I
went the exact opposite way, and I can say with complete honesty and
sincerity that I faced down the equivalent of herds of bison and woolly
mammoths and kept on my feet through their stampedes except for those
brilliant moments when I would be either trampled were thrown aloft by
their horns. So when I entered the Foundation I was a man fully
prepared. And before I ever heard about it I knew how to absorb higher
hydrogens and conscious stealing because I it spent my teenage years
amongst the most famous musicians in the world never speaking a word but
completely awake and alert so that I might draw from their powers.
There is always a surplus because men throw away that which is precious,
and even in the work, where one of my aims was to allow the sandpaper
of friction to soften my rough edges because I was very sharp and
capable of wounding as well as healing with my tongue.<br />
The entire
time I spent there was spent sucking, pulling, absorbing, stealing from
the building itself so that I emerged with a new set of skills to use in
my role of Doctor. and Priest of a currently unknown religion. When I
met Yogi Bhajan, the leader of the Sikhs in America and a person who
would brought a vigorous yoga which he branded kundalini yoga – and
those he had learned from were very upset with him because he did reveal
techniques and what are known as Kriya (specific collation and sets of
exercises designed to one purpose), but there really was nothing to
worry about because of all the Westerners who have never practiced any
kind of yoga, and none of them have reached the aim, and I had already
experienced the classically described full-blown kundalini awakening
which when that happened had been presaged by a month of pranic
movements but still took me utterly by surprise when I suddenly
discovered that all the things that people assume were metaphorical were
literal. With the exception of one thing. It did not begin at the base
of the spine but low in the solar plexus where there was a spark
generated by something literally resembling Flint hitting Steel which
then went down through my feet and into the earth like a freight train
which hit a trampoline, and I sat in the chair in a near panicked state
as this force of energy came up towards me and then right through me
upwards where all bodily functions were turned off in each chakra as if
one were turning out the lights one by one towards the door that they
were going to leave through. My breathing stopped my heart went into
fribulation with a secondary pulse under it in my physical body lost all
body heat so that it was as cold as a corpse except for a small patch
of warmth at the top of my head. In order to refrain from disturbing it I
only used my right hand to feel my left hand which felt like ice, and
then to the top of my head where I could feel the circle of warmth
through which the kundalini had passed. Anyway, that's the story. From
my decision to practice to the actual event was 3 months.</span></div>
rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-32504349503705404612014-06-17T22:30:00.002-04:002014-06-17T22:30:49.606-04:00Steve Paul's The Scene<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">
I
think one of the 1st times that I went to Steve Paul's The Scene was
when I was 15 years old, and Velvert and I wrangled our way past Teddy
when he wasn't looking and busy taking some other customers money.
Immediately we went back into the left and to the dressing room. We
always ended up in the dressing room anyway, so that's where we went and
the bill that night was Buddy Guy (one of my all time favorites) with
John Hammond Junior as his opening act.<br />
Anyway, we walked into
the dressing room and a bunch of black guys were hanging out including
one big fat one who was crushing the couch and who claim to be Buddy's
manager, who told us that but he had gone out to find something to eat.
But there was his hard shell case containing his Stratocaster – oh my
God, what a beautiful instrument (later Buddy told me it had been stolen
-- what a drag), and Velvert asked if we could touch it or play it and
the big guy said "I don't care, but you better take care of it because
Buddy's got a gun."<br />
So we took it out of its case and passed it
back and forth between us and as Velvert bent the "high e" in an over
bend that Jimi did a lot, bending a minor or major third, the damned
string broke. Okay, the cats on the couch state "y'all better fix that,
because Buddy's got a gun and he is going to be mighty mad that you
fucked with his baby". <br />
So Velvert starts rummaging through the
guitar case – no spare strings. We both start freaking out and looking
all over the place – at the time the Buddy Guy band carried two drum
trap cases, one with drum gear in it, and the other one was full of
liquor, which had everybody's favorite hooch in it - Velvert was digging
through it trying to find strings pulled out bottles of all sorts of
hard liquor and I asked to catch on the couch why they carried an extra
drum case full of booze, and they said that was for Sundays, or dry
counties. Hilarious. No luck with the guitar strings and now we know
that Buddy's going to come back soon so Velvert opens up John Hammond
Junior's guitar case and sees a set of strings which included a ''high
e" and Velvert is clandestine asking "do you think he would mind?" And I
told him a better put it on – there's a bigger chance the Buddy will
freak if he has to play with 5 strings than John Hammond is going to get
upset because somebody took his e string, so Velvert purloined the said
string and put it on Buddy's guitar and got it pretty well in tune and
everybody breathed a sigh of relief, but the circus isn't over yet.<br />
We went out and sat at a table for the changeover and waiting for Buddy
and he finally comes out with his band takes the stage and starts the
1st song, and gets through that one is starts the second song when I
guess he noticed that the high e string had stretched out and during
those little breaks between the piercing guitar lines and the singing he
put his arm out and turned the tuning peg to tighten the string and the
damned thing went down. Velvert had put it on the way Jimi did, so that
clockwise is up and away from you is down which is the exact opposite
of probably every guitarist on earth, and on the stage, <br />
Buddy
was freaking because as you tune one string on a Stratocaster sometimes
it affects the other strings so that the whole thing turns into a giant
mess. Buddy finally figures that it was a practical joke but all the
same he has steam coming out of the top of his head and if looks could
kill… Oh boy. Hendrix was due to come down later on and do some jamming
but Velvert was so scared he insisted that we leave. I did not want to
go, but eventually I realized that our friendship was a bond worth the
price and we hurried out the door and up the steps where Velvert gasped
with breaths of relief. I mean I guess he had been really scared that
Buddy would have actually shot him.<br />
I wonder if anyone else
remembers that night and Buddy's surprise that when he tuned the string
up it went down? The whole fiasco lasted like 3 minutes but in hindsight
is one of those moments you'll never forget that are just hilarious.</div>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-2685628715089038882014-06-16T20:48:00.000-04:002014-06-16T20:48:15.575-04:00Not much for Monday as I am extremely tired.Monday in July 2014 – the 16th<br /><br />I had been leading a private Gurdjeff group whose 1st anniversary would've been tomorrow, but as the Foundation shuts down for the summer and follows the school year pretty well, I went and pulled the rug out and removed everything I had sweated over for the last year, leaving the members on their own as a kind of shock and test of their mettle. And I had been removing the posts that I had written there and saving some of them and deleting others, when I came upon a very long autobiography of myself which I copied intending to past it here, but then got lost in other matters and copied something else which sent my biography into the depths of the Internet archive crevice from which nothing ever returns. Happy burial to the biography of Richard Lloyd. I don't need you anyway – I have everything I've ever experienced packed inside this thread I have found grayish pink Walnut that exists inside of my skull.<br /><br />So we will see what becomes of that. As for me, it hurt like hell – almost like an amputation. I had put some time 6 to 8 hours on the computer working for and with that group and now I have to remove it piecemeal which is very hard and tedious work. I wish I could hire a valet, but then, I have no car for him to park.<br /><br />I feel kind of empty – which is neither good nor bad – because how can empty have any feelings? Empty is simply empty. It's not a perfect vacuum, because we will never reach absolute 0 Kelvin – it's as much a boundary line as the speed of light.<br /><br />But I have been thinking about cosmogony and some new ideas people have about the singularity which became the "Big Bang" as the prevalent theory. The ID of the Big Bang may be sheer bullshit that we like the smell of. What to the Hindus have to offer? The days of night's and lifespan of Brahma? It seems that the ancients who were spoken of as ancient by those we consider ancient, had more brains and more sense than we have today. I need not appeal to aliens to understand that human beings built the pyramids so well that you cannot insert a credit card between some of the 60 ton blocks of stone. The entire thing was once covered with sandstone which must've made it almost impossible to look at during the daylight hours because it's refractory (the degree of light that is deflected and not absorbed) would've been astonishing with the gold triangle at the top, you could probably see it from the moon or even from Venus or Mars.rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-65100443601917733622014-06-15T20:59:00.002-04:002014-06-15T20:59:59.709-04:00Summer Postings Number OneI have been thinking that I have spent so much time and energy on a special group I formed which comes to its first anniversary on Tuesday, and that we should follow the school year as do The Gurdjeff Foundations and Societies – this allows people time to go on retreat also known as Work Periods, where between seventy and 120 people may gather on secluded property in order to live and Work together for whatever designated time there might be. I have gone on a number of these retreats.<br /><br />The most significant thing that I can report about the very first work period was that after it was over and I had been driven back to the Toronto international Airport I experienced an incredible culture shock to a degree that I never thought possible. For the ten previous days I had been with my people, those who follow the teachings and ideas and practices of G I Gurdjieff, and as I was preparing to leave a phrase came into my head about what I had experienced there – that I had been in a place "Where the Truth Abides and Negativity Dies".<br /><br />When I entered the terminal are immediately ran into human beings who were consistently suspicious, tightly guarded and verging on hostile as they jostled through the terminal. I saw this through new eyes that could barely stand to see what are thought of as ordinary people so defensive that each one was a stranger to anyone else, and the culture shock was such that I was for past tears and truly felt that odd sense that I had when I was yet a baby and looked up at adults and saw them mistreat each other and as I put it that – "how can it be that they are not nice to each other?" I really had no idea except that I was terrified and all my life I have been terrified of becoming like them. And what had happened? I arrived at the airport and was driven two hours to the property and a week later I was driven back to the airport having regained my sanity – that I did not know that I had lost. I held onto this state through several days and through the complaints of my wife (who was not in the work) that I seemed almost robotic – with no reactions to warp or twist my face. In a quality of voice that was calm but that my wife had learned to hate, because it meant that I was dropping out of the fight – and though she hated it also she needed me to be the grumpy Richard that she knew.<br /><br />I understood better about the trance states that we live our lives continuously moving from one trance state to another depending upon whom we are with, and while I knew that I could hold against this pressure I recognized it as a selfishness, and so I put it away and returned to acting the role that had been written for me in my relationship as a husband and father – but as something akin to the shock of exhaling embryonic fluid and inhaling air which contains oxygen and which originally will sting the lungs until the newborn gets used to it, the pain subsides and the infant has become an air breathing creature. No matter what I tried I could not hold on while playing the role demanded of me, complete with outbursts of anger and foolish laziness. Things had… Things had returned to ordinary, but I now knew once again that ordinary was a diseased state.rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-79362362263680749592013-12-20T16:42:00.000-05:002013-12-20T16:42:00.682-05:00Here are two poems that are from my original website:<br /><br />
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<tr><td><u>In a land</u><br /><br />I once lived in a land where no one was negative;<br />where no one was angry,<br />and where no one lied.<br /><br />The inhabitants loved each other beyond description,<br />so that they always told each other the truth;<br />which meant that all people were always in pain.<br /><br />This suffering they welcomed as the deepest love;<br />a burning off the dross of their imperfections;<br />and they strove to constantly feel this burning,<br />which made them shine in the glistening of their<br />suffering like diamonds.<br /><br />And the Endless Father of all<br />looked down upon them with great kindness,<br />for this was one of his favorite places.<br /><br />And then I awoke, or was it that I slept?<br /><br />And I found myself alone in a darker place,<br />where everyone was angry, and afraid.<br /><br />Where every person was afraid of suffering,<br />and they lied to themselves to avoid the pain.<br /><br />They lied to each other,<br />so that they would not be caught in their own lies,<br />and they never talked about it.<br /><br />It became impolite to stare --<br />because everyone was hiding from the fear;<br />and everyone became alone,<br />so that none were truly friends,<br />because none could bear the truth.<br /><br />Then again I slept, or was it that I awoke?<br /><br />And I could remember,<br />like a distant dream that other place,<br />my home.<br /><br /><br /><center>
<u>the flame's wish</u><br /><br />consider the image of a candle flame, burning<br />the blue below, the orange red above<br />lingering, and pressing upwards.<br />the wax<br />the material which feeds the flame<br />is below it, underneath<br />yet the flame yearns upward.<br /><br />what is the flame's wish?<br />it wishes, to reach something which is above it<br />in an unquenchable ardour,<br />it flickers, hopes and presses up<br />looking for its lover.<br /><br />we,<br />are the flame of a candle<br />aching towards a potential<br />which remains above us.<br /><br />yet sometimes<br />a spark breaks off.<br />it floats away,<br />lands,<br />and catches fire</center>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-5985168145701365462013-05-30T13:58:00.001-04:002013-05-30T13:58:17.284-04:00The Modal Order of Descending Brightness - A Musical Work Diagram.<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2"><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0"><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:0">
Neither the future nor the past is totally determined. The past is not set in stone but is malleable by working in the Now. I
think of the past as something like clay or mud, but if I don't change now, it will
be fired in the kiln, but if I have a moment of real consciousness, the
light and heat of it travel both backward and forward and sideways, heating up the adjacent wire, because I view recurrence as looking like a
slinky, the toy, vertically placed, and we either work our way up or
Great Nature causes descent through the same laws that govern the Modes
of the Major Scale as viewed in consecutive Fifths. </span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:1" /><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:2" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:3">There,
we begin with Ionic - no sharps or flats, (now this is different from
''key signature'- we are dealing with numbers only). In the Cycle of
Fifths we begin what is called "The Modes in Descending Order of
Brightness":</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:4" /><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:5" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:6">I: Ionic-no sharps or flats</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:7" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:8">V: Mixolydian, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:9" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:10">ii: Dorian. b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:11" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:12">vi: Aeolian, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:13" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:14">iii: Phrygian, b2, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:15" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:16">vii: Locrian, b5, b2, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:17" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:18">IV: Lydian, b1 yields a lower tonic, but removes all flats and introduces a raised #4</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:19" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:20">I: the #4 flats to it's normal place and we have come back to Ionian, but one step lower in key.</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:21" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:22">V: b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:23" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:24">ii: b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:25" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:26">vi: b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:27" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:28">iii: b2, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:29" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:30">vii: b5, b2, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:31" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:32">IV: #4</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:33" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:34">I: Ionic with tonic lowered one half step.</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:35" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:36">V: b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:37" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:38">ii: b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:39" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:40">vi: b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:41" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:42">iii: b2, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:43" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:44">vii: b5, b2, b6, b3, b7</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:45" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:46">And continuing downward spiral forever.</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:47" /><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:48" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:49">This
arrangements of the modes of the Major Scale shows how a "man" descends
and the more flats, the sadder is the mode, till it bottoms out at
Lydian #4 by reason of flatting the 1 (Tonic).</span><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:50" /><br id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:51" /><span id=".reactRoot[52].:0:1:1:comment10151492487832690_25901613.:0.:1.:0.:1.:0.:0.:0:2.:0.:52">Mankind
is the only creature on Earth that can play in the other direction of
the Cycle of Fourths, which is against Great Nature and against "God".
That is a "Musical Work Diagram".</span></span></span>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-18535465768030171502013-05-28T18:34:00.001-04:002013-05-28T18:34:31.939-04:00 Every Breath Birth Breath Breathing I have been given an inner exercise that I am permitted to share. It is called Every Breath Birth Breath Breathing, or EBBB.<br /><br />I
will keep this in first person singular, as that is the only proper
method of emanating, and the listener (or reader) can absorb as much as
his or her being allows, and the rest simply gets deflected.<br /><br />I am sitting, and writing on the keyboard so that I can free the breath from the interruption of it by talking aloud.<br />As
I sit, I begin to center my self by calling on all my parts to come and
join me. I wish to be all in one place for this. I wish to stay with
the body, bringing the mind and emotions back to the body so that I am
in only a single place, congealed and re-membered. <br /><br />I notice the
body, with it's aches and discomforts and I tell it to relax, as I pose
no danger to it. I use my peripheral vision to see the things in the
room that are stationary, and I close my eyes for a moment...I slowly
open them and see that nothing has moved, and that I am safe. I may do
this again...closing and opening my eyes and realizing that these things
are in the room but pose no threat to my bodies safety, so I feel safe
here.<br /><br />Now, I wish to notice more deeply, my breathing...The air
which strikes my nostrils is ever so slightly cooler than my nose, and I
follow the breath into my lungs and body, relaxing more... I notice
that my exhalations are warmer than the outside air and that exhaling
"pushes" a puff of air a certain distance down the front of my body. I
notice this distance, and I notice the depth of the inbreath, whether
deep or shallow, I measure it in image realistically. I am not allowing
my imagination to scatter or go away from this noticing.<br /><br />Now, as
best I can, I remember that I was once an aquatic creature breathing
embryonic fluid in my mother's womb. That was a place of great freedom. I
could hear sounds and taste and smell my mother's fluid of the womb and
I was less subject to gravity. It is as if I were in heaven.<br /><br />Then
her "water broke", the Great Flood of yore and I was squeezed and had
to make my way out lest I be crushed... I have been taken from that
heaven and pushed into hell. It happened. I have no doubt. And when my
crown showed, and my cheekbones came out the rest of my just slid out,
lubricated by the mucosa of the placental sac. And I was taken by my
ankles and held upside down and slapped on my ass, which was a large
SHOCK.<br /><br /> I had never been HIT before, and so I cried, and I
exhaled the fluid in my lungs and I was STRUCK again, by the SHOCK of
the air rushing in, and turning me from an aquatic creature to an air
breathing one. Every new inhalation is redolent of that first breath
SHOCK, only after I got used to it I stopped feeling the shock.<br /><br />Now,
I want to remember that shock as deeply as I can on every inhalation,
and submit and surrender to the exhalation, which is my dying to that
moment. With the shock of each new breath I pull myself into the future,
and with every exhalation, I pass the past behind me. It has become
very subtle now, and sometimes the breath stops on it's own and I let
it. It is then a time with which to ponder. Why am I here? Who is here?
That organism that contains "me"? The urge to again breath comes, but
from where? I let it breath me and remain, until I leave the exercise
and move into the currents of my ordinary life. I have been in a place
of different time, but must return to the tasks which await me. rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-23878820922399221172013-05-25T02:36:00.001-04:002013-05-25T02:36:45.383-04:00The Four Stages Of Competence/Learning How to Learn<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">The Four Stages Of Competence/Learning How to Learn</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Life is nothing but a series of mistakes and correct actions because otherwise no one could learn anything. One has to go through the four stages of competence – are you familiar with them? It wouldn't hurt me to delineate them anyway, as they are vital and this reminds me that I should put them up as a personal post or blog. The four stages are:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Unconscious Incompetence = this is where I don't even know that such a thing exists so I am unconscious of my incompetence. I use a simple example. Imagine I lived on an isolated island I'd never seen a car or a typewriter – so I have unconscious incompetence with respect to driving and typing. So now a car in a typewriter or car placed in front of me with somebody utilizing them. Now I go over and I sit in the car in the drivers seat and I realize I don't know what the hell I'm doing, or a go to the typewriter and I'm bewildered – now I have the second stage:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Conscious Incompetence = Now I have at least the ability to learn, but it requires all of my attention to be directed as in driving I need to know to turn the key, put the car in gear, step on the gas and brakes as needed, steer the steering wheel, use the turn signals, adjust the rear-view mirrors – and of course this is going to put me into a strong cognitive dissonance or confusion trance until I figure it all out. Even then I may be able to drive but not with the passenger telling me about their vacation. I have developed the third stage:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Conscious Competence = Now I am competent and can drive and use a typewriter more and more efficiently. At some point this "know how" sinks below the dividing line of waking consciousness and the subconscious and unconscious, and I have reached the fourth stage of competence:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Unconscious Competence = now I can drive and listen to your story or type without looking at the typewriter but instead at what I need to type. Just for our amusement, let's look at some of the things which required us to go through all four stages:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Walking, Talking, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Riding a Bicycle, Tying One's Own Shoes, Running, Skipping, Using Silverware, and Etc. Ad Infinitum.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">NONE – Not one came without conscious effort, and one must make a series of correct and incorrect actions which the brain then trims in its plasticity during rest or sleep will perform a kind of topiary deleting incorrect actions and strengthening correct actions. If we only did correct actions we could learn anything because we would already know it – this is known in neural plasticity as "neurons that fire together, wire together; neurons that fire separately, wire separately."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 18.88888931274414px;">Every impression – absolutely every impression conscious or unconscious knocks into the vessel of alchemical metal powders, or as I like to put it, the kaleidoscope of "i"s.</span>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-70504035796759218562013-05-09T13:19:00.002-04:002013-05-09T13:19:46.505-04:00 "Punk" Chaos to Couture exhibit at the Met/ Richard Hell From Facebook<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">So they have this exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called "Chaos to Couture" with Punk as it's underlying influence, and here I must give Richard Hell his props. I can say in all honesty that Richard Hell in the person of himself and no one else, made an impact on fashion that exploded like a nuclear bomb the ramifications of which still continue.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><br />Last night At the Metropolitan Museum of Art they held fashions most important party of the whole year and the whole world. This year I had been asked for a photograph which Danny Fields took of me the first night I ever wore the T-shirt with the words "Please Kill Me". It must've been 1975 or so, and it was at Max's Kansas City on the second floor where they held musical events.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">The hippest and </span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">most groovy and impossibly deviant sexual barroom at the time was the back room on the first floor of Max's Kansas City. It was hard to get into and easy to get blocked if you are not a "Trisexual", my word for my own condition, which was that in the realm of sex, I would do anything a couple of times or several times to be technically accurate before I would decide whether I was going to continue or to drop that type of sexual activity. There were many Warhol people, and flaming sexual creatures who could defy any type of labeling.<br /><br />At dinner time, or what they called "happy hour" they would put out hors d'oeuvres in the front bar and I must tell you that those chicken wings and things saved my life more than once from complete abstract starvation, a condition I brought upon myself by refusing to do anything except party and forward my agenda, that I had formed when I was 15, setting the parameters of what my life was supposed to look like for the next 40 years.<br /><br />People would ask of me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I would tell them, "I already am what I'm going to be when I grow up". If that just didn't confuse them into silence they would ask me what I meant, and I said, "I am going to be a world renowned electric guitarist who makes an impact on the history of rock 'n roll".<br /><br />This was often met with the statement, "but you can barely play that thing" and I would respond by saying that if I wanted the Eiffel Tower to be upside down in my backyard tomorrow morning it would be there – and that France should thank me, because that's not what I wanted. I wanted what I said – it was a kind of Will/Wish that I took aim with and let fly. I told them that it didn't matter that I wasn't any good at the guitar because all of them that were better would find themselves in a job in their guitar would be in the closet, which happened to most of them.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">I want to say this again, so</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"> I am not misunderstood.<br /><br />Richard Hell had a vision of fashion that no other single person on earth had. He is entirely individually responsible for Televisions early look and everything that came after.<br /><br />Malcolm McLaren desperately wanted to manage Television and his intention was to make Richard Hell into a complete superstar – a dazzling supernova with his other three bandmates right behind, and Tom, who was responsible for most of the music and arrangements would have also cemented his place as would have I, into the edifice of rock 'n roll history. Television DID impact Rock and Roll history, in more way than one. Tom refused to lat anyone help him or tell him to work.<br /><br />Tom did not want to work with anyone who made him work – and Malcolm McLaren preferred Richard Hell to Tom Verlaine which I completely understand drove Tom to the brink of a nervous breakdown. So he just said no, no, no, no, and marginalized Richard and even though they had begun as the best friends of life, Tom pushed Richard out and we replaced him with Fred Smith. We had done some demos for Island records which sounded terrible to our ears, but what was more important was that we for the first time could hear Billy's crazy drums and Richard's loopy bass playing made Television's overall impact a ridiculous chaos.<br /><br />So when Tom pushed Richard Hell out of the band he was replaced with Fred Smith, one of the best and steadiest bass players I have ever run into. And the Music became the focus rather that the "act".<br /><br />So, I am in the coffee table book on page 33 wearing the first "Please Kill Me" T-shirt. I refused to wear it again despite all of Richard's efforts because after the showed too young hippie dippy's who could of been in Manson's family asked me if I really meant it, because they would help me if I meant it. That's spooked me. I've had run-ins with those cult people before and it ain't pretty. So, I never wore it again, and Richard started making his own version, nuttier and more color and dynamic.<br /><br />Richard recently released his autobiography and I must say that he captured the exuberance some of those first rehearsals, and his portrayal of Tom Verlaine is accurate. He makes a few mistakes with regards to me but so what. Here I am on Facebook writing what I should be writing elsewhere – my own memoirs. But this is practice. <br /><br />I will say it a third time: Richard Hell is the individual who single-handedly influenced fashion globally. And that is incredible. He deserves the respect that he has earned. </span><br />
<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.984375px;"><br style="background-color: white;" /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">So, I lived the life of a teenage alien hobo from outer space with a guitar. I had a band but we only did one show, and then I forged Television with bandmates Tom, Richard and Billy. It's the only band I consider that I have ever been in, and I was in it wholeheartedly. Contrary to the ridiculous films of rehearsals where Tom and Richard couldn't sing in tune and yet wanted me to joi</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">n them. I considered that ludicrous – I told them – develop a harmony and then I'll come in because I can hold a tune and neither of you can.<br /><br />The first time I ever saw Tom Verlaine he was playing by himself on audition night at a place called Reno Sweeney's – the first thing I saw as he tried to get through the door with the guitar on his back and carrying a tweed amplifier was Richard Hell getting up from the table and going to help him carry his stuff to the stage, but at the door I could see that Tom was wearing a ratty old T-shirt but that Richard was not satisfied until he tore the shoulder so that one of Tom's nipples were showing. Tom came on and played three songs and during the second song I leaned over to my manager Terry Ork, who wanted to manage and be a patron of the arts to some kind of rock and roll band, with me at the center, but I knew I was missing something and so was Tom, and I could see that we each could fill in the missing part of each other.<br /><br />So Terry worked at Cinemabilia – a Hollywood posters and mugshots of the stars. Richard Hell also worked there and Terry asks him to talk to Tom about my request for us to get together and see if we could mesh. That happened. Tom and Richard came down to the loft which was in Chinatown and we passed my guitar back and forth between Tom and I and then Richard and Tom went off in some kind of corner and had some kind of a conference and came back and said "yes – let's try it."</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: arial; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">So Tom and I coerced Richard (who did not want to play bass because he said that working with Tom was a visit to the dentist). Tom wanted him to do it and so did I – I cornered him at the loft and told him that he had movie star looks and that we needed him because in addition to bass playing he had very </span><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.984375px;">definite</span><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"> ideas about the way we should look and present ourselves. In hindsight, I </span></span></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">call it "The Glamor of Poverty".<br /><br />Our first rehearsals felt like we had moved into a new dimension that didn't exist on earth and that we were cosmic teenage hobos with guitars who had joined the circus – the interstellar circus I might add. There was a hell of a lot of laughter and knocking mic stands down and rolling around on the floor continuing to play sing and laugh. It was the cahoots. We invited people down to see us and it was super hilarious. Then we rented our own theater and put on our first show. Even with the best of intentions we could not replicate what we had experienced while alone rehearsing in the loft in front of an audience. Something got lost and something was gained.<br /><br />Throughout the years Richard Hell held a grudge against me, even though I almost left the band because of his departure, but with Fred Smith the music got ethereal and majestic. It was a second kind of Television, and one which endured until I left amicably but frustrated in 2007. They have added Tom's buddy and are continuing to use the name Television, which our band permitted so long as there were three of the original four, in case anyone left or died. I should not have permitted that but it's water under the bridge. They are in South America and then Australia and then they go to London. Cookies crumble. They just do.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">So they have this exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called "Chaos to Couture" with Punk as it's underlying influence, and here I must give Richard Hell his props. I can say in all honesty that Richard Hell in the person of himself and no one else, made an impact on fashion that exploded like a nuclear bomb the ramifications of which still continue.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;">I want to say this again, so</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 17.98611068725586px;"> I am not misunderstood.<br /><br />Richard Hell had a vision of fashion that no other single person on earth had. He is entirely individually responsible for Televisions early look and everything that came after.<br /><br /></span>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-68999639579100923552013-05-07T16:17:00.002-04:002013-05-07T16:17:42.380-04:00The Quickening, Id Ego and Personas.<br />
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]">The human being (woman) usually only has one child at a time. One birth – sometimes twins, either identical or fraternal. Rarely a triplet and above usually due to intervention of some medical sort.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[4]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[5]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[6]">While the fetus and infant is in the womb it is in a state of bliss – after "the quickening", this new person has its own heartbeat and lives an aquatics state. Recent advances in imaging have shown that this fetus seems to enjoy and have a lot of fun in the womb, kicking and playing, masturbating (yes, it's already too late not to grow hairy palms) and having the life of its mother's life by being inside, breathing the peritoneal fluids and being fed through the umbilicus, which in cutting my own sons umbilicus taught me, is no flimsy rope but a really tough multi-structured entity.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[7]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[8]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[9]">What was once heaven turns into hell after the "Great Flood" written about in all the world's archetypal history but really refers to the water breaking, which sends a woman into labor. Now the previously glorious womb turns into a Python like squeezing device, trying to expel the infant, who is probably going into shock just about now. After the woman has dilated to 10 or 13 cm, in a healthy birth we have the crown coming out. As a man I can barely imagine the suffering that the woman must go through. (My only analogy might be trying to crap out an intact watermelon – boys, remember that – your mother went through that agony which is from the early Greek and means "The Trial").</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[10]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[11]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[12]">As the head is the largest part of an infant, getting the width of its cheekbones and skull out of the vaginal opening usually results in the rest of the infant flopping out quite easily with the placenta and the other mucositis. That part I can barely remember, because in 1951 they routinely knocked the women out, and some of whatever it was manages to get through the umbilicus so that I came out woozy.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[13]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[14]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[15]">This is not a first-person singular autobiography so suffice it to say that I do remember the doctor holding me upside down and smacking me on my ass to get me to cry, and in hindsight I see it as a kind of Christian confirmation: "Welcome to the World – This is what you can Expect from it." I guess they do all the normal things like cutting the umbilicus and tying it all off and suctioning mucus out of the infants ears, nose, mouth and throat. Then they swaddle the infant and put a hat over the soft spot – whether you like it or not, your first yarmulke! (I think that is hilarious)</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[16]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[17]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[18]">But anyway after my mother woke up they brought me to her and I remember staring at her in an existential shock – where was I, who is this woman and what happened? My mother reports her own version: She says that when our eyes met she thought she was looking into the eyes of the oldest man she had ever met, but that after about 90 seconds I softened and became a baby.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[19]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[20]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[21]">The infant comes out with its own Id, the roots of which mean "one's own self". To this newly arisen being, everything exists as its self in one of two states – comfort and satiation, and hunger, discomfort and frustration. I can certainly tell you that I felt like an idiot, being a baby means being so dependent on others. But the id still exists in a primordial (before number) and primeval (untouched) state of cosmic bliss.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292497594964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[22]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]" style="font-size: 11.111111640930176px; line-height: 15.555556297302246px;"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]" style="font-size: 11.111111640930176px; line-height: 15.555556297302246px;"><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]">This state exists even into the playground where a young toddler might see a toy she likes and just goes ahead and grabs it and plays with it with no respect to the other child that might be the owner. When the object is withdrawn from the child who is taken it, it might raise a fuss declaring "mine, mine, mine". Unashamed pure id.</span></span></span></div>
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<div class="clearfix UFIImageBlockContent _42ef" id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0" style="margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 0px 0px 8px; zoom: 1;">
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[2]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292501994964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]">After a time the child begins to see and accept that there are boundaries between things as well as between him or her and other people etc. This facilitates the growth of what is called ego – and absolutely necessary instrument of discrimination and boundary acceptance. There is nothing wrong with having an ego. You will have an ego for your entire incarnated life, and there is nothing mysterious or bad about it. Now the child has an id and an ego. Fine, but here comes something else called persona, from the root sona meaning sound because in Greek theater several men (women were not permitted to act) would where various masks and change the sound of their voices to assume the different characters in the plays.</span></span></div>
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<a aria-label="Edit or Delete" class="uiCloseButton UFICommentCloseButton UFIEditButton" data-hover="tooltip" data-tooltip-alignh="center" href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/FourthWaLA/10150292249809964/?notif_t=group_comment_reply#" id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[0].0" role="button" style="background-image: url(http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/yh/r/rkQF27utoCR.png); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 15px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-decoration: none; width: 15px; z-index: 1; zoom: 1;"></a></div>
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<span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]">A person begins to build various personas with which to deal with the various circumstances and vagaries of life, and whomever that person is having to deal with. Man does not just have one personality, he has lots and lots of them – practically a different one for every situation. That's one of the things people don't understand about personality – it might be a kaleidoscope of 1000 parts which arrange and rearrange depending upon whom they are dealing with. When I was growing up I had both white and black friends – when I was with only black people and I was the only white person, I developed a persona – a personality who knew their lingo and slang and could hang with them. I certainly did not expose my parents to that personality. I had a different personality for them, and I hid many other personalities from their vision. I probably had 12 different personalities in school. One I showed the principal and teachers and others I showed different groups of people.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[1]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[2]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]">So, what Mr. Gurdjieff reiterated is absolutely true. Man's name is Legion. He is not a single person, ever. I use the following analogy often – the man who sets the alarm clock is not the man who has to get up to it, or there would be no need for a snooze button. In fact, if a man were singular, he would probably never need a clock at all. At the Priere they devised a manner of drinking a certain volume of water in order to get up at a certain time, using the bladder as an alarm clock. A singular man without quotation marks or anything else could set his alarm clock and would wake up simultaneously as the gears inside the clock prepared to sound the alarm.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[4]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[5]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[6]">But all of these personalities are not the worst of our troubles. The worst thing imaginable gets imagined – a "perfect self" who is never wrong and should be worshiped. It is the very tsizm of idolatry. And embarrassment or stage fright or anything else like it occurs when we believe that the "other" can see both that imaginary self and the flawed self that actually manifests. This imaginary self is our foremost enemy. It must be ruthlessly ferreted out and destroyed. But a person cannot do this on their own, or perhaps it is so rare that it might as well be a fact that no one can do it on their own.</span><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[7]" /><br id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[8]" /><span id=".reactRoot[20].[1][4][1]{comment10150291818524964_10150292502054964}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[9]">But at the beginning of the work – when one meets our work and our tradition, one is told that one must not change anything in the personalities except to observe them in an objective manner, as if we stood outside of ourselves and could see ourselves as an actual walking talking object. And one of the reasons why we are told not to change is because our only desire is to change in the direction of the imaginary worshipful false self, and if we change, as much as it may hurt to not change, we will be playing a shell game with ourselves and we will never see what others have seen of us. We will try to hide that we are sorry-assed pigheaded idiots, who are filled with internal considering and what are called "Requirements." Even if a man could just get rid of requirements he will have come a long way in our work – accepting reality as it is rather than how we would like it.</span></span></div>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-8204608655764807542013-05-06T19:57:00.004-04:002013-05-06T19:57:50.465-04:00ID, Ego and Personas.<br />
In my experience which includes a full blown classical Kundalini Awakening, while on tour in Osaka, Japan, and which took 18 months to get a handle on the explosive force which would even wake me out of my sleep into a psychosexual pinball game on tilt. It really is kind of funny because I came back to New York and sought out kundalini yoga classes where everyone else was trying to awaken the kundalini and I was trying to get it to go back to sleep or rest. I could not look upwards with my eyes because it would instigate another episode. I had read all of the ancient texts such as The Hatha Yoga Pradikipa by Svatmarama, The Geranda Samhita, The Shva Samhita, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Shat Krama Chakras and many more.<br />
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I learned that what I thought was metaphoric was literal, and what seemed to be literal turned out to be metaphoric. Well, Mr. Gurdjieff does say that we live upside down and topsy-turvy, so I guess I found out about that, pretty damn impressive. But this post isn't about that. It's about what is called the "Ego". When a child is born it arrives with ID – the essence or in Sanskrit, the Rasa, or "Juice" of the self. This ID is the root of the words identity and identify, ad infinitum… It fills the entire creation from the baby's point of view – absolutely everything is "Me". That's why young toddlers play in the playground but separately, and if one sees a toy it likes it simply takes it and if it is told to give it back to its owner it replies with the words "mine, mine, it's mine", and the parent has to superego the child into relinquishing the other person's property.<br />
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Somewhere between two and three or four years old the now toddler begins to identify that there is a boundary, or separation and that there are separate things and separate beings such as "mother", "father" and "brother or sister" or "Friend". This is the beginning of the boundary which is the "Ego Essence". All of this is simple developmental stages which were probably better as Paget delineated them, but I am working my way towards a particular slant.<br />
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Now that you have an Ego, and you begin to recognize boundaries and concepts like mine and yours as separate. All well and good. We can't have human beings just simply walking around like zombies taking what they like as complete moronic idiots, can we? (sounds like some people I have heard about: the 1%)<br />
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Personally I don't think so, but now that we have the ID and the Ego we can begin to build the person--ality. The personality of course comes from the root word sona which means sound – as a few men would put on a play in ancient Greece they would simply switch masks to play different roles. The men also played the women, as the women were not permitted to act. So here we have a young being in the midst of grown-up beings that haven't been (even as much as they would have liked to) given a proper upbringing – so that the sins of the fathers visit upon the sons unto the third or fourth generation, after which they wash out but are replaced with pretty much the same load of shit.<br />
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We are very proud of our educational system, which has a child sitting in a chair hunched over with a writing implement in his or her hand for something like eight hours a day, five days a week. At the conclusion of 12 years of this, they are usually "graduated" either into the workforce or further education (I refuse to call it higher education – it's just college). That involves sitting in lecture halls listening to so-called experts prattle out their curriculum. And so it goes…<br />
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Some anthropologists want to change the name of our species, and they are serious. They want to change the name from Homo Sapiens Sapiens (man who is aware of his own awareness) to "Homo Sapiens Sedentarius , man who does not move. He sits in front of the television or the computer or the dinner table or in the car, and he hardly knows what to do with himself as regards physical health, so he joins health clubs for six months and quits after two weeks. This is due to the deviation in the half steps of the Scale and Solfege, going round and round on the right-hand side of the Enneagram performing his little songs of do re mi, do re mi, do re mi, or 142142142142 his whole life.<br />
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As an aside, when I was eight years old I had a hamster. I loved my hamster and I used to take really good care of him and watch him run around on his little wheel. I often wondered if he knew he wasn't going anywhere for that he was not leaving anywhere, but one day my hamster ate a little ball which was hanging from the curtains, and died from being poisoned by the flame retardant chemicals. That guy meant a lot to me. And with his wheel he taught me as I watched him endlessly.<br />
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So, in growing up we imitate and invent characters for different situations. These are our personalities. Everyone can have as many as they like. Personality is strange, because it is built out of everything we aren't, really, and it is built as needed, so to say. Man's name is Legion, and the guy that said that wasn't kidding. As I was growing up, when I was with my black friends I learned their lingo, and when I was with other musicians I had a different persona. I had a persona that I allowed my parents to see, and many that I hoped they would never discover. As a Teenager, I had more personalities than I could keep track of.<br />
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Eventually a man decides he's got to embark on a money making something. He has to do ordinary work, whether it involves millions of dollars or penny candy means nothing. He struts around with his personalities like roosters – have you ever seen a rooster farm? They each have to have their own little hut so they can strut. Once on tour we rounded a bend in either Kentucky or Tennessee and by golly there was a rooster farm. I had never seen a rooster farm so I asked the driver to slow down. It was fascinating. Each rooster had his own A-frame house and they would either strut back and forth in front of it or they would climb on top of it and preen themselves. I just couldn't believe it. I felt like the luckiest boy on earth that day, because I had never seen a real rooster farm, and now I had. If the roosters got too close to each other they would peck to the death, just like men.<br />
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So a man has a job or work or a career (he gets fancier as we move along) and he becomes somewhere within the 99% who aren't the one percent who are super rich.<br />
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I never wanted a job because I thought it would harden like cement around my feet and I would be inmobile and stuck in that one place, so I became a musician of sorts playing in a rock 'n roll band and traveling a lot and making some recordings. My definition of a successful musician is as follows: "a successful musician is paid to go where tourists pay to go, and when you get there they applaud."<br />
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Enough about me. Let's get back to this study of the realm of personalities. No one, and I mean no one, even Mr. Gurdjieff, has only one personality. Everybody needs at least a handful if not an entire crowd. I was once doing some quiet work and I heard a murmuring just like you hear at the intermission of a Broadway play where everyone goes to the lobby or outside and has 1000 conversations, only in my quiet work they were all my different personalities having what seemed like endless conversations. I almost have to laugh at myself for that one. It sure was a bucket load of Richards, and they were all capable of saying "I" and causing me endless difficulties and problems.<br />
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They are still there chattering away, but I have learned to not bother listening to them. I have an Agenda; I have a Aim, and it consists of providing service to the Work at large.<br /><br />I've been inside the "Inner Circle of Conscious Humanity", and I like it there a lot. I don't know about you, but I expect to spend my dotage there, until the undertaker overtakes me. <br /><br />I consider myself one of the luckiest people on earth, and I don't believe in luck. I was asked if I believed in God when I was little and I said "no, I know". The idiot adults couldn't get past the phonemes and asked me what I meant and I told them, "I don't need to believe because I know, and knowledge is superior to belief."<br />It still is.<br />
rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-49973693910300003752013-04-23T16:12:00.001-04:002013-04-23T16:12:58.606-04:00Burnt Toast.<br />
Burnt Toast<br />
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This is an old work story called burnt toast. There was a man who woke up one day feeling wonderful and full of life and very excited about the day ahead. He was married to a fine woman, had a nice house and a nice car and a wonderful career where he never felt like he was actually having to work, but that his work was fun, and brought Win/Win situations to every endeavor.<br />
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However there was one thing he hated, and that was when his wife would burn the toast. So today he wakes up feeling wonderful, gets dressed and starts down the staircase to the dining area but his nose perks up and he thinks he begins to smell burnt toast. His wife had been preoccupied with one of the children and had in fact burnt the toast. She tried scraping it and put another couple of slices in the toaster, but he had smelled the burnt toast. His good mood was destroyed and he stormed into the room and asked his wife what she smelled, and she admitted that she had burnt the toast. Now she also, lost her good mood in the smell of burnt toast.<br />
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The man ate his breakfast hurriedly and went to the garage and started his car and began backing it up into the street but he wasn't really thinking and his rear end collided with another car coming down the street. The driver of that car had been in a very good mood this morning – he had gotten a raise and had proposed and was now engaged to be married and he loved it. Until that unconscious bastard banged into his car. Now that guy was fuming and he smelled burnt toast. They exchanged insurance information and each went on their separate way smelling and tasting burnt toast.<br />
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The man's secretary had woken up in a great mood. She had finally caught up completely with her work at the office and this allowed her a little bit of free time to attend to her own needs, such as polishing her nails. Her boss, our man, roared into the office screaming at her for polishing her nails and telling her to get back to work. Now the secretary smelled burnt toast instead of nail polish.<br />
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The men had a meeting that was almost certain to earn him a great deal of money but because he was in such a foul mood he transferred the taste of burnt toast to his client who promptly fired him and went somewhere else.<br />
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Perhaps you can begin to see how negativity spreads like a contagion – just like a virus on the border between life and nonlife it spreads like wildfire, and by the end of the day perhaps 1000 people have been affected by this one event of the wife burning the toast by accident.<br />
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That's the story of the Burnt Toast. There is nothing more to say and it is a perfectly true story being played out all over the world. People have requirements, no matter what they are, and if they are not fulfilled – well then, burnt toast.<br />
rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-52973591110448695122013-04-20T11:07:00.001-04:002013-04-20T11:07:08.569-04:00What is the Work?<br />
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What is the Work is a question often posed at the beginning of each semester at the Gurdjieff Foundations as well as the question: "Why do you keep coming here?"</div>
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These are questions not easily answered, as one's ideas of the meaning of Gurdjieff's Work tend to change over the years. At the very beginning when he showed up in Moscow and began to accept pupils the first thing he would ask them was, "Why are you coming to me?", And "What is your aim?" And then he would say to them that if their aims and his correlated (and at the time he declined to describe his personal aim), then they could walk along together for a while. But at some time in the future perhaps their aims will diverge, at which time they would of necessity go their separate ways.</div>
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He made all of this very clear to everyone who came to him – that to follow him was not easy and would never be easy but only get harder and harder, because "man" is a swine, unbalanced and malevolently formed. Gurdjieff said the same thing that Jesus said: "Man's name is Legion."</div>
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In physics work is defined as a certain amount of energy required to stimulate activities among the molecules of water in order to raise their general temperature by 1°. That's pretty cheap work, and Mr. Gurdjieff emphasized the fact that his Work was very expensive, requiring many zeros. One, 10, 100 and so on. He once said to the D Hartmann's that he could raise their temperature to 100°C (the degree at which water turns from liquid to vapor), but that they could not remain there but would return to their own temperature. He told them that they must work on themselves to increase their temperature to 100°C and keep it there.</div>
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Notice that if you have water in a container and you heat it up to 100°C it will evaporate and become water vapor and no longer constrained by the container that held the liquid – now the vapor is constrained by the shape of the room you may be in, and there is no way (according to entropy, the second law) for the vapor to condense back into the bottle. So, not only do you need an alchemical vessel or bottle but you also need it to be in the shape of an alembic, so that the vapor condenses in the alembic and drips down into another container, but that which is in the new container is purer because the contaminants and debris remain in the alembic.</div>
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So, as an alternative method of looking at this one can use the image Gurdjieff used of the vessel containing metal powders, where they heat will melt them into larger and larger chunks – less "Legion", and more single person. That is the right direction.</div>
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These larger chunks can be made magnetic, or radioactive or radiant. There are many things one can do once one has become a single individual that are not within the scope of powers of the ordinary man.</div>
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Of course, these new powers must not be used, because they are simple signposts that one is headed in the right direction – they are Great Natures own powers which as a last resort she bestows upon a man in an attempt to get him back inside the net of illusion. One must recognize them as what they really are – signs that escape from lower orders of laws is imminent. This means that that point is that where a man must be more discriminatory and vigilant in order to congeal these new powers so that they cannot be taken from one – one must fuse them into one's own being.</div>
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But most of us are so very far from that. One of the aphorisms that used to be in Dr. Welsh's basement and which came from the Priere said "I Love He Who Loves Work".</div>
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Once upon a time it was a thorn in my side – I did not know what the work entailed and I did not want to work, as far as I knew as my associative thinking allowed me to consider what work was.</div>
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Now I see differently, and I am eager to work, according to the five strivings: on myself, with others and for the Work itself. I have become a grateful servant, a watch guard on point, and I Am Responsible. I Have an Aim and cannot be dissuaded from it.</div>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-64585451523168445062013-03-31T16:02:00.004-04:002013-03-31T16:02:18.850-04:00The Olive Press<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">This is BTW, an old, old story:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Once a long time ago, the Devil and his ministers and demons held a conference. The Devil was tired of using all his manpower to assign a devil to each person in order to squeeze negativity out of each one separately, and he sought for a way to set up a kind of "toll booth", or other such contrivance that would squeeze and suck out the negativity of many people at once, or at least free up some demonic power to be used on another front.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">There were many suggestions, but the one that interested the Devil the most was the idea of the "olive press".</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">If you know anything about olive oil, then you won't have a hard time following this logic: First and best olive oil is called cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, which is really sweet high grade olive oil. Then there is second cold pressing, followed by third cold pressing, after which the olive need to be heated to get out more oil. Then there is final pressing which crushes as much oil out of each olive as can be gotten. The remnant is simple pulp which is thrown away.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">One of the Devils most trusted Demons, who had been studying engineering in his spare time suggested setting up mechanical devices all over the world that would squeeze the oil of negativity out of people as if they were olives.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">First cold pressing virgin olive oil could be gotten from small children simply be placing obstacles in their way, like high walled cribs, and those leashed that parents put their children in, and they invented the word NO, which they taught to parents all over the world...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Every time a parent or guardian would tell a child NO (try to imagine how many times a child hears that word before it is even 5 years old -- it's astronomical), a little trickle of really high quality negativity would be squeezed out of the child, and eventually the word NO would have a siphoning effect, and the child would learn the word and use it on it's parents and then the olive press would work on the parents too, so that this one word, a negative word, NO, which had never been in Man's vocabulary until then, would serve as a wonderful way to introduce children to the world of demonic negativity. At the same time, at about the age of two, soon after the child started to talk, it would learn this negative word and use it on the parents, and the oil would start to flow from all sides.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Yummy, thought all the demons and imps. They applauded this engineer Demon and called him a genius and immediately began teaching the parents to say NO to all sorts of harmless things like a child exploring it's world. They added "DON'T" and other spicy words to the parents vocabulary and the olive press was all set. Nothing for the demons to do but sit back and enjoy their contrivance at work. Wonderful juicy extra virgin oil out of mankind.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Then they thought about the adolescents, and their natural rebelliousness, and they added a few adjustments and they managed to create huge fights between parents and their teenagers. This is "wonderful", they thought, "magical", now they had a second pressing and got tons of delicious oil from families.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">The engineer demon wasn't finished. He called together all the architect devils together and asked them to influence the world by setting up devices all over the place to squeeze negativity out of otherwise calm and "good" people.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">They worked all through the night (which in hell lasts forever), and then put their plans into action. Some examples of "olive presses" that squeeze negativity out of ordinary folks might be:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Hotel elevators that are too small, so that when everybody checks in or checks out they have to rub up against one another.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Construction on highways that cause bottlenecks and traffic jams, which drive people nuts and cause them to honk their horns at each other (which by the way, does nothing positive - makes nobody go any faster, but just increases everybody's tension)</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Squeaky brakes. General increase of noise in cities. Narrow sidewalks. Detours. Crowded shopping malls.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">You name it... the list goes on and on. And on and on and on.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Now, I play a game. I listen and look for the olive presses. When I see one I yell out (not out-loud but to myself),</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">"OLIVE PRESS, OLIVE PRESS, OLIVE PRESS!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">I ask myself if I am going to let the olive press squeeze negativity out of me and I use their own word on them and say inside, NO.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">I see "olive presses" all day long, and hardly any of them get any negativity out of me because I see them for what they are. Contrivances set up by the Devil and his cohorts.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">How do you re-act when you are face to face with an "olive press"? Do they "get you", or do you recognize them?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Now that I have explained this subject, I wonder if it might be of any use to anybody else, to be on the lookout for olive presses and resist letting them squeeze you? Or will they succeed day after day getting the oils needed for the fires of hell? It's up to each of you your very self. Please let me know, and if you notice any "olive presses" that I have not mentioned, please make me a list, so I can be on guard for these nasty devices.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Right now they are using a jackhammer in front of my apartment, and have been making all kinds of noise from 8 in the morning till 5 at the very least. I know that they are only doing their construction jobs, but they are also without even knowing it, acting as an olive press to all the tenants in my building. They may get oil out of my neighbors (in fact I have heard some of them complain in the elevator), but they get very little out of me.</span>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-26536851888072324722013-03-18T14:03:00.002-04:002013-03-18T14:05:35.131-04:00The I AM in each of us & the Homunculus Concept. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: #fcf8e7; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"> When I was five or six years old a mantra came to me. I said it over and over for several years, especially when seeing "other people" It read:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fcf8e7; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">"I AM the same I AM as you are, when you say I AM" </span><br />
<br style="background-color: #fcf8e7; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;" />
<span style="background-color: #fcf8e7; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">The ONLY difference is conditions; if I had been born into your body by your mother at your time and place and conditions, I would BE you. Completely, substantially and fully; I WOULD BE YOU. Not like you, not a doppelganger but actually you. The only thing that exists is relationship.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">I said this mantra day and night for years, until it became an inviolate part of me. I AM as you ARE, and we all live as One, fractured only holographically.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">If you take an ordinary photograph, and break it into pieces, every little part will be in focus, but only contain part of the image; However, if I take a Hologram, and break it into smaller pieces, each piece will contain the entire picture, but the smaller the piece, the less focused the whole would be.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">This means that the search for what are known as Homunculi ("little man") is important to the alchemist and hermeticist. Above you can see two pictures of the same ear. The one on the right is easily recognized as an ear, but the one on the left (the same ear upside down) can be with little effort be seen as a fetus in the womb. This represents a homunculi. A little picture of the upside down ear shows the entire body as it forms in the womb.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">This is how the Chinese build a method of acupuncture in the ear, so the outer rim of the ear now represents the spine, the ear lobe now represents the brain and inside the ear are represented the internal organs and their respective 'meridians'. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">So the Hermetic Alchemist looks for Homunculi, and the study of ratio and music turns out to be a very large piece of the Holographic Universe. Chemistry and Alchemy were born of the same parents, as did Astronomy and Astrology. Religion and Science were also one, and the schism between them has cost the world it's primordial and primeval connection to the levels above and below. Admittedly, each seeks the other, because without the Alchemical Marriage between the two, the world is doomed. The Earth will have failed; great Nature will have failed, and the Sun through which the Sun generates it's radiance in the sky may fail.<br /><br />The greater universe may not even notice, but we sure would. </span></span></span>rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-22356605202741935092013-02-20T16:16:00.000-05:002013-02-20T18:32:52.953-05:00The Imperfection of Perfection<br />
<u>The Imperfection of Perfection</u><br />
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When I am working with my musical students on guitar I teach musical theory which is based on very ancient sources – many thousands of years before Pythagoras, whose name means "He who is as a Python" (the snake that kills by squeezing the breath our of it's victim). The basis of this beginning of musical theorem is the concept of Ratio, which is based on the ancient Greek root word Logos.<br />
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The word Logos can mean a symbol, such as copyrighted shapes that designate products and companies; Logos can also mean Word, in the sense of a word being an image phenom that is a symbol for something else. It can also be translated into English as the word Ratio/Symbol/Word, which makes the beginning of the Gospel of John all the more interesting, because an equally efficacious beginning might be as follows:<br />
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"In the beginning was Ratio, and Ratio was with God, and Ratio was God". This is as fruitful as "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"<br />
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Ratio is defined by the relationships that exist between differing sizes, numbers or shapes. In music, I only need a single string (called a mono chord) to study the ratios of what is known as the Major Scale. Here again we come up against language variants – when I say the major scale I do not mean that there is another scale, because all other scales and chords are developed by means of this one static formula: whole step, whole step, halfstep; whole step, whole step, whole step, halfstep. But this scale interval numbers of 123456 and 7 can start at any pitch so long as they follow the formula WWH, WWWH, WWH, WWWH, WWH, WWWH and so on. On a piano or similar keyboard this is why the black keys come in sets of twos and threes. Now let's return to the word ratio and look at the ratios within the major scale:<br />
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1:1 unison, (the tonic) and in perfect agreement with itself – this agreement or agree ability we call consonance, and at the very bottom we have dissonance to the point of what we call noise. The next ratio would be found by stopping the string halfway and allowing only half of the string to sound. This was give us the ratio:<br />
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1:2 equivalence, (the octave) and perfectly in agreement with the tonic and sharing its name or designation. Any multiple of two will yield octaves straight up in a vertical line, and always yield even numbers. Then we come upon the next ratio –<br />
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2:3 the Dominant (the fifth major scale tone) it is dominant because in a world of unison and equivalence we have no measure, but the dominant is a different tone completely, although it stands in complete agreement with the tonic. Then –<br />
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3:4 the Subdominant (the fourth major scale tone). A little bit of arithmetic may help us here; the four is an octave of the two, and one of the threes is above while the other one is below – this is why they are called the Dominant and Subdominant and are also considered perfect in relationship to the tonic.<br />
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We have reached the end of the intervals considered perfect, and now I get to ask a rhetorical question: if I state that there is something wrong with "Perfection", what might it be?<br />
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The answer is rather simple: Anything that has reached perfection has no reason to change or to move, and is therefore nonexistent. There is nothing in the phenomenological universe we live in that is not subject to change over time as well as in motion relative to all the other factors in the universe. So we need imperfection and asymmetry in order to sustain anything at all. The next ratio is:<br />
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4:5 the Mediant (the third major step in the major scale) played along with the tonic it is not perfect. Next we have:<br />
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5:6 this is the minor third and contains a good deal of suspicious sorrow when played along with the tonic. We're going to skip the ratios of 6:7 and 7:8 because they are only found within portions of the major scale. The next ratio we find usable is:<br />
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8:9 the super tonic (the second major tone in a major scale). It is also what is known as a whole step. Then penultimate, we have the ratio of:<br />
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15:16 this is a minor second, or a half-step As the numbers get higher and the notes get closer together they become less and less affable or consonant and more and more dissonant. In the tempered scale that we use in modern music the only more dissonant and ugly combination of notes is found in something called the Tritone, which is also called the Devils Interval, because in the major scale it rests between the perfects of the Fourth and Fifth and is equally three whole steps from the Tonic and it's Octave.<br />
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Now if you have followed this simple progression from unison and perfect consonance down to the utmost dissonance, we find that we can utilize these ratios to create what is known as the Major Scale.<br />
1-2-34-5-6-78-2-34-5-6-78 etc. ad infinitum...<br />
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Now we should have a look at the words of Jesus as he tells his disciples to "be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect".<br />
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The Greek word in the Gospels is 'teleios', which is used 48 times in the New testament, and has multiple meanings, meaning both Perfect or Mature. Certainly Jesus could not have meant Perfect as I have described the Creation, because as we have noted, nothing in the phenomenological universe can be perfect. Anything that was perfect would automatically disappear or become non-existent and this includes the entire Creation.<br />
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Mr. Gurdjieff knew this well, as he differentiates the original condition of Creation by the term "Autoegocrat", which means essentially "I govern by myself" – this is a condition which must exist outside of time or space,, or what Mr. Gurdjieff calls "The Mighty Heropass"; the equivalent of the Hindu God Kali, the wrathful goddess who represents the irrevocable destruction of all things through the inexorable movement of time.<br />
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And as we have seen through our creation of the major scale by ratio, that a single octave is asymmetrical, which concurs with modern physics in its examination of the big Bang which describes the creation of a minute ratio differential between matter and antimatter, where for every million particles of antimatter there may be 1,000,001 particles of matter. It is that minuscule differential in favor of matter/energy that allows for our universe to exist<br />
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Mr. Gurdjieff calls this change from perfection to a cyclic asymmetry by the term "Trogoautoegocrat", a term that means "I Govern by Eating Myself", this symbol for which is called the Oroboros, the pictured of a snake eating its own tail, which by the way proved to be the solution to what is now known as the benzene ring, which opened the door to organic chemistry, discovered by a fellow named Kukulke. This is also the secret of the third force of which Mr. Gurdjieff asserts that we are blind. He calls us "third force blind".<br />
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<ul>
<li>Mr. Gurdjieff asserts that every manifestation requires three equal and opposite forces to come into existence, which he calls the "Active, the "Passive" and the "Reconciling". They are also known as "Affirming", "Denying" and "Reconciling". These correlate exactly to the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost as well as the parent of this concept of three attributes of reality that braid together to form the Creation which is the Hindu Philosophy of The Samkya (which translates as "enumeration") and which calls the forces the three Gunas, or tendencies, Rajas or active; Tamas or the resistance of Inertia, and Sattva, which sits between them in the same manner as the backwards S in the double fish Yin Yang symbol of Chinese Alchemy, and is considered balanced and "perfect" in the meaning of reconciling and mature.</li>
</ul>
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Physics also describes these three forces, although our Scientists do not know the esoteric or inner meaning of their schemata by the designation of the three forces as Centrifugal, or Shiva, the God of Creation and Destruction both. The Big Bang falls under the authority of Shiva which blows all things apart; Physics' opposite of Centrifugal is for Centripetal, or inward force that is under the auspices of the God Vishnu, the "preserver", who causes gravity and for things to have stability through time. The third force in Physics is something rarely thought about, although without which, centrifugal and centripetal cancel each other out, is The Revolving force, The God Brahma, who has no devotees in Hinduism, but which creates the process of the Trogoautoegocrat, meaning that everything rotates either around itself, like the Earth, which creates the illusions of day and night (although the Sun, which also revolves, pours out radiant energy in all directions at all times), or revolves around some other center, yielding spirals all the way from the fingertips to the galaxies.<br />
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Again we are brought home to the Hermetic formula: "As Above; So Below"<br />
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Be then as mature as your chosen deity, understanding that "God" may not be as perfect as the usual reading of Jesus' words would seem to apply. Mr. Gurdjieff said it best when he noted that "Angel can teach only one thing; Devil can teach everything" Become as meek as Doves and as wise as Serpents. Drink with the Devil, but leave him to pay the bill.<br />
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-89605495780408362022013-02-19T13:24:00.002-05:002013-12-20T16:43:36.699-05:00The Prayer of Jabez<br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>The Prayer of Jabez</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>Hidden amongst the Chronicles in the Bible is a very strange paragraph which deviates from the line of heritage that Chronicles is mostly concerned with; that is, so and so begat so-and-so begat so and so, and so on (pun intended). Embedded in this 1 Chronicles 4:10 is something called the story of and the prayer of Jabez.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>It is a very short piece which goes something like this, paraphrasing in my own language that which is translated slightly differently in various versions of the Bible: "And a woman birthed a child she named Jabez, which is translated as "I delivered him in pain and sorrow ", and Jabez was considered more righteous than his brothers and he prayed:</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>"Dear Lord, Oh, that Thou would bless me and increase my purview, and let me not lapse into Unconsciousness, whereby I may cause Harm, and our Gracious Father Endlessness Granted This unto Him ":</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>Also rendered as "And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that Thine hand might be with me, and that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested."</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>After that detour the Chronicles returns to the lineage of who begat whom begat who, almost endlessly. Torturous to read, but this simple Jewel stands in stark relief. How am I to interpret this short prayer? First, he asks for a blessing – and the blessing among the Jewish people of antiquity was the placing of the dying patriarchs hand upon the head of his firstborn son and imparting to him the spiritual power and blessing that the father has to give. Then, he asks for an increase in purview, which is the area under which one has control – one might also read it as "increase my reach and the power thereof". Finally, in the third section of the prayer he asks for God's continuous presence, so that he may not cause harm or suffer in vain himself.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>These are three lofty requests, but it then says that God granted him that which he requested.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>For me today the most important part of the prayer is connected with the word purview, the definition of which is: </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>1a : the body or enacting part of a statute</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>b : the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>2: the range or limit of autha : the body or enacting part of a statute</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>b : the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>2</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>: the range or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>3</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>: range of vision, understanding, or cognizanceority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>3: range of vision, understanding, or cognizance</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>I am particularly concerned with definition 2, which describes the scope or boundary of one's authority and responsibility.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>The question then falls upon me: what is the scope and boundary of my authority, competence, responsibility, concern or intention?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>Certainly, the government of the United States is beyond my purview. I can have a small role in voting, and I can have a horizontal input with my activities, but these are attempts to enlarge my purview, acting outside of my real and authentic powers, perhaps in order to attempt to bend a higher power towards my wishes. But if I recognize my own purview I will come to understand that I am incredibly small – practically nothing. In my room I am large, in my building I am smaller and in my neighborhood I am a tiny speck of life which goes hither and thither.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>If I read a newspaper or watch news on the television and take-up a political opinion which I then attempt to foist onto my fellows, I am looking and speaking outside of my actual purview. If I am to be a mature adult, and not simply a grown-up child who asks childishly for things to be different, I thereby become a fool. So I do not gossip, and I do not engage in useless dialogue, "barroom arguments" or anything of that nature. Men do not realize how much of their own energy is wasted by this frivolous imaginary powers that they pretend they might be in possession of. They are NOT.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>If I am honest and sincere with myself and allow myself to be disillusioned from these imaginary false and chimera capabilities, and very soon come to the conclusion that my real purview is vertical while radiating out horizontally some short distance from myself. But myself – that self which is beneath the false and the ludicrous, within those bounds is my true purview. I may pray as Jabez did, that my purview or sphere of influence becomes enlarged, but I cannot do it – I have no power in that area. One might say that one's being has a number of limits: my actual physical body, the body of my emotions, the body of my mental facilities and my attention and powers of image making, or constructive imagination – constructive imagination is what I need prior to any real impact in the world of inertia, the world of things, and I cannot influence the being condition of another, unless there is a common aim or search for commonality.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><b>Today this is my prayer. That we may find commonality, because we are all of one species.</b></span></span></div>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-86818889867687513132013-02-03T12:59:00.002-05:002013-02-03T13:01:44.986-05:00The Devil<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 8pt; width: 500px;"><tbody>
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<u><strong><span style="font-size: small;">The Devil</span></strong></u></center>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Who is the Devil? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">1): There is a hidden teaching which says that when God created the universe it was perfect, but because of this perfection it had no reason to change. It was perfect in all directions. It therefore threatened to collapse in on itself and disappear. This would have undone the universe which would have made God sad and bored. He therefore brought his firstborn principles before him, the Archangels; and asked which of them would be willing to descend into the material creation and to act as a "stop gap"; introducing asymmetry and preventing perfection from threatening creation. Lucifer was the most beloved of God and stepped forward. He agreed to this task even though it would make him a scapegoat, because he would prevent the perfection of any created thing. Since all created things have an urge towards perfection in the hope of returning to the bosom of the primordial unity and bliss, they would necessarily resent this action of Lucifer's.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">In addition, because Lucifer loved God more than any other and because he was going to be sent to the position farthest away from God in his task, he decided he would perform another service for God that could only be performed from the position of the antipode. He decided that he would invent allure, and seduce all those who sought to move towards God away from him. This would have a double action: it would keep God's love for himself, as the first action of jealousy, and second; it would keep all the unworthy out of God's "hair." In this function, the devil would act as "trier" of purity and intention, with the ideal that none should pass into God's bosom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Because Satan would be at the antipode of creation but standing between the fulfillment of perfection, and since God in his role of creator stands at the center of the creation, from the position of those things which are created, Satan would seem to have usurped the divine position of the creator. This has the result that the universe resembles a house of mirrors, and thwarts any efforts towards finding God. With the introduction of the devil at the antipode of creation, the universe becomes an exitless magic circle. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The foregoing is from an esoteric musical teaching.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">2): How are we to relate to the Devil?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">In the late 1800s there was a group of French poets who reasoned thus:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Since God and the Devil were engaged in a kind of military warfare, one should use military allegory to understand spiritual strategy. They reasoned that most persons are of very little interest to the Devil because while thinking to themselves that they are headed for heaven, by their own actions they are in fact headed straight for Hell. It is therefore unnecessary for the Devil to waste any of the energies of his demonic legion on them. They could be assigned very minor imps and demons who would guide them towards the right berth in Hell. These souls were also quite skinny -- providing very little fuel for the fires of Hell. To the demonic reasoning most of the world provided much quantity but very little quality. This was offset however by certain individuals who led exemplary lives or who performed holy actions known or unknown. These souls were headed directly towards the gates of heaven, even sometimes without knowing it, and especially without intention (which itself would be a disqualifying "sin"). In order to capture these types of souls, a kind of ambush needed to be set up. This required rather high-ranking devils to hide in ambush near the gates of heaven. Then, after the "do-gooder" saw that he was virtually at the gates of heaven he would let down his guard or become Shanghaied and become ripe pickings for the demonic hordes. These types of souls would provide plenty of fuel and nourishment for the fires of Hell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Again, the poets reasoned in the following manner: It is extremely difficult to find the gates of Heaven. It is not so hard to find the Devil. Since the Devil is likely to be waiting in ambush near the gates of heaven, finding the gates of heaven only requires that one heads straight towards one's own strongest Devil. Of course there is the difficulty of eluding his clutches when you are headed straight towards him, but the poets reasoned that it would be worth the attempt and that in addition, great art might be spat out during the throes of battle. If one could weather this centripetal force, then one would be flung through the doors of heaven though a kind of trampolining effect. In addition, one's art would testify on one's behalf of one's original intent. This lead to the terms "disarrangement of the senses" and "intentional vertigo."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">3): Spiritual cultures around the world have come up with different terms for dualism, for the active and passive forces which operate in the world. For the Chinese and they are called Yang and Yin. In the Indian subcontinent there are called Rajas and Tamas. The Christian culture would use the terms Heaven and Earth. In each of these sets of opposites the first term would be the light and active force and the second would be the dark and resistant force. This second force would include the ideas of the Devil. But not so well known is the fact that in each of these sets of opposites there is postulated a relationship between them which has its own name, and which forms a third and invisible force. For the Chinese this is called the Tai Ji, or great ultimate limit; in India it is called Sattva, the balanced pure and spiritually even force. Even in Christianity the third force is known specifically as the holy ghost, which is usually termed the love which exists between the father and son; the son in this instance standing for the passive or resistant force. Therefore it is not simply a case of choosing between opposites but rather coming into a balanced relationship between two only seemingly antagonistic forces which create the world. In this instance, the Devil cannot be avoided, resisted or eliminated. Instead, the Devil and all that he stands for needs to be integrated into a balanced whole. This is very similar to the ideas in psychology of C. G. Jung of the integration of the shadow self as part of the job of individuation, which is the goal of Jungian psychoanalysis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">4): Astronauts are known to lose muscle mass in outer space where there is no gravity. Science realizes that bone density and muscle mass are depended upon weight bearing work against resistance. Without resistance no work can be accomplished. In a world without any friction nothing could develop. Therefore the Devil is necessary for any kind of spiritual development. If he did not exist we would have no chance to develop our spiritual musculature at all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">5): Beelzebub is known as Prince of the Devils. He is also known as Lord of the flies, and flies are connected with the elements space and air. As Lord of the flies Beelzebub commands these forces. To human beings, flies are irksome pests who are obstinate and troublesome. In a way, flies are like our own unwanted habits which seem unamenable to our will and which return to plague us even as we shoo them away. Interestingly, in Hatha yoga there is a figure who is one of the founders of the yoga called Matsyendra. Matsyendra is known as Lord of the fishes and king of the yogis. Why is this so? One reason is that the energies of the body are likened to shoals of fishes who travel through the body and who are as difficult to control as the direction of fish in the water. Therefore, he who has mastered control of the subtle energies of the body, or Prana, is called king of the fishes. Clearly an analogy can be drawn between these two perhaps mythical entities; Matsyendra and Beelzebub both represent a mastery over ordinarily uncontrollable forces. One could also deeply ponder the connection between the flies and air, and the fish and water; Air and Water being two of the great elements postulated by ancient esoteric teachings worldwide.</span></td></tr>
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rlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1347857032696170767.post-35544799855853029382013-02-02T12:24:00.002-05:002013-02-02T12:24:44.558-05:00The Power of Real Wish<br />
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<u><strong>the depth of wish</strong></u><br /><br />Star light, star bright,<br />first star I see tonight;<br />wish I may, wish I might,<br />have the wish I wish tonight.</center>
<br /><br />As human beings, we are each endowed with the same organic format and limitations,<strong>the result of being living, physical creatures who breath and eat and think</strong>. We take in food and air and sensations, we excrete behavior and <em>we have an inner life</em>. In this inner life are thoughts and desires; <em>unspoken and even unconscious urges</em>. What is the nature of wish? What is the meaning of this action within us which can be stronger than hope? <em>Where in our <strong>inner nature is the platform upon which we can examine the nature and meaning of wish</strong></em>, which seems so fleeting against the mundane world, and what happens in each of us as our ability to wish is tempered by the facts of material existence?<br /><br />One may speak of dreams, of innermost desires; of the deepest longing of the heart;<em>even when crushed by the <strong>weight and gravity of our ordinary existence</strong></em> these longings still have the power to <em>renew us</em>; to surge forgotten energies within us; to cause us once again to fall in love, not with any other person, or even with ourselves, but <em>with an idea, <strong>with a hope of the unrealized potential within us</strong></em>. When we wish; when we truly come to recognize that within us as a wish (and not simply a made up desire or objective, but <em>a surge towards a longing</em> which lives an independent existence from us), then <em>for that moment we <strong>open to a life which is ordinarily denied us</strong></em>, and we have access to a power that <em>can organize us into wholeness</em>, and which can move mountains on our behalf. Even if only for this reason and no other, we owe a debt to ourselves to <em>go within and search for <strong>the meaning of wish</strong></em>.<br /><br />All myths and fairy stories contain tantalizing remembrances that there is within us <em>the hope of a primordial connection with one's wish</em> and of the realization of one's destiny. Destiny; <em>as opposed to fate; as opposed to conscious intent</em>; destiny as the unfolding of the greatest of possibilities out of the unformed potentialities contained within a given life. This is why the image of the genie, the fairy godmother or the wizard are such profound symbols of how the <strong>deepest inner wish in a person</strong> can be independent of all of the actualized aspects of a person, <em>for the true wish <strong>comes to us from an entirely other level</strong></em>. This also points to the reason why the true wish can never be mistaken with simple desire or objectives which may be self-realizable. The creative force always irrupts into consciousness from a level outside of it. This is why<em>the wish has power <strong>at the same time</strong> that it is disregarded in ordinary life</em>, because the wish can only await its actualization, and can never "do." This also means that one cannot <em>influence the wish in any ordinary way</em>. Yet wish is strongly differentiated from hope, which contains within its jurisdiction the element of happenstance, upon which we may rest our hope. Wish, on the other hand, does all, <em>contains within itself <strong>all authority for what is to be</strong>, and yet "does" nothing</em>.<br /><br />What is the goal of wish? There are <em>many levels</em> upon which wishing may be said to reside. There is the wish blown <em>upon the</em> birthday <em>candle</em>. The wish sent with a coin <em>into the fountain</em>. There are the <em>teaching wishes granted</em> by the Jinn, where <em>the fallacious nature of desire is revealed</em> by the foolhardy wishes of the recipient and where the last of the granted wishes is almost <em>always a fervent plea to <strong>return to the state which existed before</strong> the wishes had been granted</em>, but which can bring at the end <em>a hard won maturity</em>. There is a coin of wish, and all know that the spending of this coin can be <em>foolish or wise</em>. There are the unrealizable wishes, <em>verging on fantasy</em>, but which can still be perhaps <em>amongst <strong>the wisest of purchases</strong></em>. For those who dare to wish to fly to the moon or to have secret powers of wisdom, perhaps the wish <em>pays its dividends in <strong>unearthed energies and ideas leading to invention</strong></em>. At the very least, the fabulous and sweeping wish which is <em>scarcely to be expected</em> brings within it <em>a delicious inner thrill</em>, and it is a sad thing that so many have forgotten its delights.<br /><br />As to <strong>the highest wish in a person</strong>, <em>the "true wish" and its goal</em>, this goal is much further and has a much more concrete form. All myths and fairy tales suggest that one can <strong>exert no influence</strong> <em>whatsoever over the form of this wish</em> (although one may "blunder" into the formation of the actualization of one's wish, when all of the normal avenues for the attainment of one's desires are paused, or disabled, and <em>usually through the innate "goodness" of one's heart</em> or essential nature -- which is the part closest to power in wishing). Power in wishing must be bestowed upon one, and not always by overtly beneficent forces. There is the tradition that <em>bestowed power to wish is almost always a test</em>, which not so much separates good from evil but that <em>separates the innermost essential in one from everything else</em>. Tradition holds that any wish other than one <strong>connected to the essential treasure</strong> <em>of the heart</em> (and which also moves one in the direction of one's hidden destiny) will be a wish that will bring a dismantling of elements within the self which are false. The false wish, when it comes true, brings decay which is objectively speaking healthy and true, like a pull upon the reins of the wayward horse. Only elements which do not belong to the true and essential self may be ruptured in this way. The Alchemical axiom is: "<strong>gold does not fear the fire</strong>," but for those upon whom this wish is bestowed, the event is one of <strong>a preternatural winnowing fire</strong> out of which none but the purest intention can emerge unscathed.<br /><br />In the archetypal chakra system of Kundalini yoga there exist two minor chakras near the heart which are forbidden as objects of meditation. In English these chakras are named respectively '<strong>the wish granting tree</strong>' and ' <strong>the seat of unutterable anguish</strong>.' These two chakras are considered to be sister and brother, and one may not be opened without opening the other. At the base of the wish granting tree is an altar upon which is placed the deepest wish of the self. <em>This wish is placed upon this altar <strong>prior to the birth</strong></em>. Any other wish placed upon this altar is considered a desecration and a rape of the sister by the brother. He then comes to the rescue of the sister and cuts down the tree, and if the chakra is opened duplicitously, the brother in his wrath <strong>opens and reveals</strong> <em>the sacred conscience</em>. In the hidden and apocryphal legends of Jesus it is said that both of these chakras in him were fully open, which is why he was said to be a man "well acquainted with sorrows." The idea in Buddhism of the bodhisattva or perfected being who remains on the earthly plane in order to support the salvation of others is also connected with these two chakras and their opening. When the chakra of <em>the wish granting tree is opened and <strong>the Great Self receives its wish</strong></em>, it also receives the deep and penetrating realization of the plight and inner state of others via the brother. Of these two chakras, it is forbidden to say more.<br /><br />Now, for those who have come to <strong>recognize their wish</strong>, the journey towards its<em>fulfillment</em> is an odyssey of epic proportions. Against this truth every man is the hero,<em>set upon the <strong>seven voyages</strong></em>, or demanded to <em>fulfill <strong>twelve tasks</strong> and to return with a proof</em> <strong>not given lightly</strong>. Almost always mythical forces are set against this adventure; the <em>dragons of the unconscious</em> guarding the precious treasure. For one who is set out on such a quest, tradition allots years of search for guidance, and a journey of unimaginable distances through <em>dark and dangerous places</em>. One's own resources are never equal to the task, and therefore must come a <em>search for tools</em> with which to perform the tasks which are strewn <em>against the intent</em>, and which almost in every case cause the supplicant to detour, and to undertake Herculean tasks which <em>on the surface seem to have no connection to the goal</em>. Thus, one on such a mission seems to the outside observer perhaps to be headed in wrong direction, and even to seem the dolt or idiot. On top of this is the fact that these <em>tasks are usually formulated to be well<strong>beyond the ken of the seeker</strong></em> and cut perpendicular to their strengths and abilities and requiring the assistance of <strong>magical elements</strong> <em>and of a guiding guardianship</em>. But the true seeker after his wish <em>has in all cases magic in his pocket, a <strong>compass or lodestone which guides him unerringly</strong> towards his goal</em>. All the rest move like lemmings convinced of their direction while the seeker after the <em>true wish of the heart moves in a direction <strong>wholly opposite to expectations</strong></em>.<br /><br />But in our world, <em>legend and myth and fairy story are relegated to childhood</em> , and so with wish. We ask our children to wish, but not ourselves. We remind <em>each other to wish</em> on the birthday candles <strong>but have forgotten why</strong>. We throw coins in the fountain but we do not mean it, and which of us would dream of wishing on a star in any seriousness? What has happened to us? Not only has our power to wish withered but even our recognition of its power. <em>We relegate wish to the purview of the naive</em>. And yet we hear the words: "lest ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise see the kingdom" and do not take them to heart. Are these words of fiction? While we consider that we live our lives in fact, richly or poorly, it may be that our lives pour out from underneath us. The idea of a study of the meaning of wish should be <em>far from trivial</em>; but we will have to walk backwards, working ourselves <em>out of the disarray and complications</em> we find ourselves in, {and <strong>return to simplicity</strong> in order to find it. In this place of simplicity we can again <strong>pick up the thread of wish</strong> and follow it home, to the land of make-believe, where anything is possible and where nothing yet has happened. Perchance we may then again <em>find our forgotten true <strong>wish, and begin again</strong></em>.<br /><br />Some time ago I took a survey asking various acquaintances what their ideas regarding wish had been when they were children and now, as adults. The wishes took many forms. Some came true and some did not. There seemed to be an intuitive inner understanding that a c<em>ertain coin of <strong>wish is given to each of us</strong></em> to spend, and like the child in front of a selection of candy, we ponder our choices, we take aim with our hopes and at last, we <strong>let fly with our desire</strong>. Once having made our wish we wait, curious but certain of a power having been loosed and certain of a response from the universe. We can still do that. One person told me this: that when he was young he had been careful not to spend his wishes foolishly, but <em>there came in time to him a wish that was simply stated, preposterous</em>. Because the wish was an impossible one, he told me that he knew that he could make this wish without fear of spending his precious wish money. As he told me of his wish, <em>the impossible <strong>wish of a child's heart</strong></em>, his face softened and his shoulders relaxed. His eyes began to twinkle and moisten and he began to laugh. As I saw this change come over him what I saw was this: that <em>he became more himself and less the trappings of life</em>. He became younger in fact before my eyes, years peeling away as he remembered, and I knew in my heart what I told him then, that the impossible had worked its magic. That the wish itself held the power he had been looking for, and that <strong>his wish had in fact, come true</strong>.<br /><br />The English word wish is derived from the proto-IndoEuropean language root 'wen,' which translates as "to desire, to strive for." Closely related, and from the same root is the modern English word 'win,' to win. In old English the word wynn means pleasure, joy, and the old English word 'wenan' means to expect, imagine, think. The old English word for wish is actually wyscan. The origin and development of human language as a means of expression is deeply shrouded in mystery, and the study of the source and meanings of even a single letter can provide rich nourishment in the search for understanding, often offering multiple lateral avenues for exploration. The fact that sounds uttered by the human voice can convey density of meaning via metaphor, allegory and veiled allusion should rightly return us to a state of awe at the original mystical nature of our very existence. The word wish contains three basic sound components: 'W', 'ie' and 'sh'. Each of these phonemes can be examined individually into search for depths of meaning concealed within the compound sound group which makes up its word.<br /><br />The 'W,' is a letter derived from 'V,' or 'U,' hence double 'U.' It comes from the Semitic 'vau,' meaning nail. The 'V' contains the idea of identity, of point, and the double 'U' connotes the image of relationship, of I and you, or I and thou. Thus the words 'womb,' 'woman,' 'with.' In the quality of its sound is a wooing. A pulling, an asking, like the sound of a wind instrument, deep and vibratory (as against the 'K' or labial 'L' for instance). Thus the questioning words: 'who,' 'when,' 'why,' 'where,' 'what.' In its representation of the doubling of 'V,' we have the idea of twisting or turning back upon itself; bringing us the words 'weave,' 'whirl,' 'worry' and 'world.' One could continue and exploration of the hidden and primeval meanings of the 'W' sound in words like 'word,' 'wise,' 'wife,' 'warm,' etc.<br /><br />The second letter in wish is the vowel 'I,' sounding 'ie.' This letter comes from the Semitic 'Yod,' meaning hand. The hand is the human tool for grasping; for making connections and the 'I' as a vowel sound form stands for a connectivity, the binding. It is the center vowel in the vowel series AEIOU. In this central position it embodies the idea of developing and maintaining a connective relationship. Consider the identification we have with the body and with the thinking which is represented by this letter as a personal pronoun. Also, the 'I' can serve as a balance between two ideas as a fulcrum and as a mechanism of joining, as in the suffix 'ing' and as the 'i' in semi circle.<br /><br />Finally, the last two letters, 'S' and 'H' together make up one phoneme, 'sh.' The 'S' is derived from the Semitic 'shin,' which means tooth. It was originally pictured on its side, which can give the image of the teeth. It is used in this sense of the wave in the words 'snake,' 'shape,' 'smooth.' This consonant is generative, standing for the sexual power. For this reason adding an 's' at the end of a word plurals it, multiplying, as in 'senses,' 'eggs,' 'brains'. The "S' stands for the teeth, the instruments whereby food is taken into oneself, whereby the food is divided and possessed. It is hot and sensual as in 'hiss'. The 'H' is from the Hebrew 'cheth,' which stands for fence. This is like two 'I's connected, but enclosed. If is a frame which prevents the passing of energies. It is close in meaning to the numeral '8' stands for infinity when placed upon its side, because the energies on either side of it are made to circulate rather than dissipate. This 'H,' this fence at the end of 'wish,' helps to secure its power and serves as a kind of hermetic seal upon the word.<br /><br /><br />Bibliography:<br /><br />The Grimm's Fairy Tales<br />American Heritage Dictionary<br />Kundalini For The West<br />The Serpent Power - Sir John Woodruff<br />Shat Puri Karana<br />Life Is Real Only Then, When "I Am" - G. I. Gurdjieff<br />A Mystical Key To The English Language - Robert M. Hoffsteinrlnychttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15538152293065756938noreply@blogger.com0