Zigzag Idiot

It doesn't matter what genre. It doesn't have to be inspirational. It doesn't need to be explained. Everything is welcome. Sad, goofy, angry, happy, inspirational, weird, profound, profane, etc.,,,,

The gruesome video above may have not been authentic. Here’s some intimidating footage of bombs being dropped on a roadway. War is stupid. Sometimes necessary I guess. I felt my expressions about the possible future of the U.S and world economies were clumsy. Anyhow the pace of our changing world seems to be speeding up with A.I., robotics, and nanotechnology. I don’t like killing anything. I’ll kill red wasps, scorpions, some spiders and 2-3 kinds of poisonous snakes. I killed a red wasp with a fly swat the other day. It’s pretty do-able. A friend of mine used to hunt them with a BB gun. Have a nice evening,,,

The Science of Idiotism is about the hindrances to becoming a Self Realized Being, plus other stuff. The term Idiot here is drawing an the old Greek usage of it as: being oneself,,unpretentious ,,,, But it is used also simultaneously as the standard modern usage of fool because until we 'have our Being', life is experienced on the emotional pendulum connected with dualistic thinking and we are pretty much just a torture to the world, of some kind or other. I used to be an a epic complainer in addition to Alcoholic and coward. After that, I went around depressed and with a long sad face because I couldn't drink alcohol and party it up forever. Some people can but I realized I couldn't. The Science of Idiotism is a little known teaching from the mystic George Gurdjieff. Bruno Martins - The Realized Idiot - is about the only book written solely about The Science of Idiotism. It's very good. I recommend it. You can find a little here and there with a google search. Zigzag idiot is #9 on the Ladder of Reason. Of all the Idiots, I thought this one made the best screen name. I've been working on my self for a few years doing self inquiry. Keeping this Journal out here in front of God and everybody meshes well with the Gurdjieff work of Self Observation and Self Remembering. The whole lot of us are just bad full of bullshit, says Gurdjieff. Justifying,,, self deception,,, Kundabuffer he called it in his book Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson. I really like AH Almaas's The Diamond Approach. It's Gurdjieff,,, modernized plus psychological explanation of things like our defenses against inadequacy. Is it a schizoid splitting off and sticking ones head in the sand? or do we employ a Grandiose self to shield against inadequacy. This work which includes, very much processing our shadow material can be very painful and destabilizing. Being light hearted can amount to good strategy if it can be sincere and natural. This Work teaches we project any repressed guilt we may have out onto others. I've observed this in myself over time. Also, we don't have to be negative. The practice of not expressing negative emotions has shown me the existence of my own spiritual sleep. We wake up and although might never sleep as deeply again, spiritually, we take naps as E.J. Gold put it. It's very difficult sometimes to just simply feel , without repressing negative emotions and not give expression to them. It pays out big dividends in 'spiritual coin' though. Remind me of this, if, in later post, I go off on a angry emotional rant.

Ooo We have Artificial Intelligence and Robotics linked together and growing at an exponential rate of increase. In the near future this will impact G.D.P. In many ways. By increasing productivity of products and services while lowering cost of productivity which will also involve reducing human labor. This might be an opportune time to initiate the Universal Basic Income (UBI). Everyone gets a paycheck for just breathing air, basically. Here we have a high rate of unemployment and the resultant increase in sexual activity,,,,, masturbation, sport-fucking, and such. An awareness of human shadow ,,,,education ,,,,? How do I phrase this,,,,? Sexual repression is linked with people being shamed and the result is often more compulsive negative behavior (psychological projection) which leads to forms of violence. Conscious awareness is reduced by this pernicious phenomena called shaming others. Problems of comparable magnitude- $ spent on Military and Defense How terrible wars are and ultimately how unnecessary. This is a guy getting his appendages blown off by a land mine. With only one arm left, he flops around and struggles and probably bleeds out fairly quick. Put yourself in his place. How precious life becomes,,,,

@Soullee I like! Thanks!

Kosmic hopscotch I read Yogananda’s Biography of a Yogi years ago and was fascinated yet had reservations regarding some of the more outlandish seeming metaphysical occurrences. In the mid 1990’s my pastime was spent reading books about life between lives,, books regarding hypnosis of people telling of past lives. Edgar Cayce and other authors like Sylvia Brown and James Von Progue ,,,, Channels like Seth,,, There was definitely a range of credibility with these and other Authors. Todays chores working out in the heat with different YouTubes playing provided for some interesting insights and felt sensations. It’s nice to feel so good that you cry. I’m going back in the house now to take a bath and eat like pig.

Did Jesus Christ ,,,, Does Jesus Christ want people to worship him?

My I-CHING consultation this morning. This is good advice. Actualizers should be aware of the pernicious effects of spiritual materialism that are essentially born out of the mindset of the collective ego. Hexagram 1 Line 3. All day long the superior man is creatively active. At nightfall his mind is still beset with cares. Danger. No blame. The Sage is informing a person not to approach his effort at self-correction (or correcting anything) ambitiously, as if it were a religion, whereby he ignores his normal life. The danger refers to ambition as an activity of the ego; it would seize the development of the true self and impose it upon the person as a belief system, with rigid rules and duties, in the self-flattery that the more conscientious and self-effacing he is in his efforts, the more swiftly he will attain his goal. "Danger" refers to harboring and acting upon the idea that self-effacement and self-sacrifice constitute humility. This idea falsely equates effort at self-correction with asceticism: being poor, working without pay, or being otherwise selfless. This idea is based on the collective ego's idea that the self is the source of evil and therefore needs to be overcome through self-sacrifice. It is the ego that claims the victory when the self is sacrificed. "No blame" refers to a person's freeing himself of all kinds of ambition. At the core of spiritual ambition is the idea that it consists of "work" at "self-development," with the implication that there is a spiritual ladder that ascends upward to heaven. All ambition belongs to the ego, and is dependent on the person's believing in his "original fault," or "inherent deficiency." (See Line 1.) Freeing the true self involves no striving. It is a process of deprogramming layers of mistaken ideas that have repressed and concealed it. All self-images of high achievement, whatever forms they take, only distract and divert a person from freeing his true self. (See p. 541, Freeing Yourself from Self-Images.) This line is also about misunderstandings that surround the nature of creativity. True creativity is a partnership with the Helpers of the invisible world. The presence of ambition is the mark of the person who believes he must do it all. On this account, his creativity suffers. Only when he asks for help from the anonymous Helpers will he collect the help he needs for his inspiration, and also to complete his work. To make this happen, he must first deprogram the ideas behind his ambition, his dependence on the values of the collective ego for his inspiration, and his ideas of insufficiency of self that block synapses in his brain that would connect him with his feelings. (Also see the main text of this hexagram.) Hexagram 10 The Judgment: If the person treads upon the tail of the tiger, it bites him. Here, the Sage describes how certain hidden Helpers a person is born with cooperate to enable him to conduct himself in harmony with the Cosmic Whole. These Helpers are concealed senses, for which the tiger is a metaphor. They are not the commonly known five senses, but are, for example, a person's sense of appropriateness, the sense of loyalty (to his inner truth), the sense of fairness, and the sense of wholeness. These senses are referred to throughout this book as the "metaphorical senses." One of their general characteristics is simplicity, as mentioned in Line 1: they allow a person to respond harmoniously and appropriately to circumstances without the necessity of thinking. They operate as involuntary responses that keep him centered and complete within himself, therefore in harmony with the Cosmos. When a person lives his life in harmony with all his senses, he remains "without blame," meaning, he does not create a fate. The metaphorical senses mentioned here are perceptible by the conscious mind only if a person tunes into them. However, when the conscious mind comes under the domination of the ego, thinking becomes exalted and these senses, as a feeling consciousness, are subsequently diminished as "primitive," repressed into the subconscious, and disregarded. Because they continue to act on their own, subliminally, on behalf of the whole, they have been assumed to be of a purely mechanical nature, as the name "involuntary nervous system" suggests. Their cooperation with the conscious mind can succeed, however, only when the person validates their importance. The senses mentioned are located in muscle tissues throughout the body. They bring about involuntary responses such as blushing, retreating, fleeing, and also advancing along the line of no resistance; the latter is another term for saying they achieve things through trans-formation. One of the functions of a person's metaphorical senses is to protect him from harm coming from outside that threatens his completeness. In short, they enable him to do the right thing in relation to the circumstance of the moment. "Treading on the tail of the tiger" is a metaphor for what happens when a person acts against these senses, because they have become suppressed through conditioning. Then the "tiger bites," in the form of Fate. The suppression of a person's metaphorical senses starts at a very young age, when a program is introjected into the child's psyche that demonizes his "animal nature" as dirty and undesirable. The goal of this program is to have the child regard every fluid and material that naturally comes out of his body as despicable, and every exploration into his sexuality accompanied by guilt. Since his animal nature and sexuality are the very sources of his life force (chi energy), these mistaken ideas trap the person in an impossible paradox: he must regard the very things that comprise his nature and supply him with nourishment as his enemy. A further program is installed by the collective ego which tells the child that he can redeem himself by developing his "higher nature," through following the dictates of the collective ego. However, his rejecting the body as inferior puts spells and poison arrows on his body, creating illnesses and other forms of Fate. A person receives this hexagram when he is experiencing a fate due to the above false program that has disabled his metaphorical senses. (See p. 546, What are Spells and Poison Arrows?) The Sage draws our attention to the difference between self-development defined by the collective ego and the natural desire to free the true self from the ego. The collective ego first cultivates a sense of insufficiency and guilt in the individual in order to create a false dependency on it; in slandering a person's animal nature as "wild," it provides a reason for its hierarchical control over him. By accepting these slanders the person incurs Cosmic blame. When the blame is continued over a period of time, a fate is activated to make him aware that he is in conflict with his true nature. To free the true self, the Sage encourages him to rid himself of the idea of guilt, and then of the entire program of cultivating his "higher nature," which is based on guilt and the idea of insufficiency of self. Part of the collective ego's program is the development of so-called qualities of character and models of conduct that would make him a "superior man." Implied in this program is the self-flattering idea that by becoming guilt-free, the person can become "like God." This hexagram makes a clear distinction between conduct that leads to the fulfillment of a person's destiny, and conduct that creates a fate. Fate is not, as the collective ego would make us believe, something we are born with, that is written in the stars, or is the result of a hostile Cosmos or Nature. It is rather the consequence of conduct resulting from mistaken ideas and beliefs. Fate is a signal that the person is diverted by these beliefs from fulfilling his Cosmic destiny. Spells and poison arrows connected with this hexagram contain phrases such as, "humans' animal nature is the source of evil" "in and of yourself you are not enough to cope with life," and ideas that a person is guilty by nature. Related phrases are, "you have to develop character,"you have to become something," and "you need to become like God." Related spells come from calling things by wrong names that create confusion about their true natures. Among them are calling the ego "the self" and inventing things that do not exist in the Cosmic order of things, such as "soul," for the psyche, "instincts" for the metaphorical senses, and "culprit" for a person who is trapped in mistaken beliefs.

“Your being attracts your life.” - Maurice Nicoll. Profound YouTubes I stumbled across this morning. The following would not embed. Here’s the link anyway,,,, https://youtu.be/dFdukzKmwWU?si=UPl8iETtpUB1K_Da

Self observation and Self remembering Do you ever forget yourself? What about the notion that there is no self or that there is a lesser self or ego to let of to make contact with one’s higher Self,,,? Over time, different Teachings utilize language in different ways sometimes creating new usages and definitions. What is your capacity for putting new ideas in an as-if-it-were-true mental file folder in order to learn something new? To not be blinded by one’s own certainty.

Wonder how long it will be before robots connected to artificial intelligence will be waiting tables, stocking shelves, laying bricks, mowing yards, pizza delivery, Ferris wheel operators, baggage handlers, elderly assistants, unemployed steelworkers.

Last night I had prolonged and detailed dream of traveling to Houston regularly. For some reason I had taken up bull riding in rodeos. Yesterday I got my old 1995 1/2 ton 4w drive Chevy running again. It hadn’t been started in 7 years. I put another fuel pump and filter in it and it started right up. In 2017 I had stopped to patch some barbed wire fence on top of a large hill. I failed to set the emergency brake and let it roll off a hill and crash into a wooded area. That was a strange feeling to turn back to where the truck was parked only to see it rolling off down the hill with increasing speed. I dug it out of the woods with a front bumper and windshield completely destroyed. Amazingly the motor was intact and even the radiator I had installed just a week prior was spared.

A small passage from my I-Ching consultation yesterday,,, This line can also refer to a person who, in following a spiritual path, has not experienced the benefits he expected. Instead of questioning whether he has been following the correct path, he interprets the counsel "to return" as saying that he has not tried hard enough, and needs to try harder. He must recognize that a spiritual path, as described in the main text, is a forward-leading path that leads to more and more separation from his true self, as he tries to become something special (i.e., a "spiritual being"). The path of return indicated by this hexagram is the path of divesting oneself of all self-images and attempts to be special. The person needs also to rid himself of the blame spell he has put on himself for not doing enough. (See p. 550, Deprogramming Procedure.) Pertinent correlation from Almaas’ Teaching- Ending Up with a Mental Image for an Identity An important question remains unanswered: Why, when Being or its aspect of space is lost, is what remains nothingness and not something else? In other words, why do we end up with emptiness and not another content of experience? To answer this question we have to discuss the point at which psychodynamics touches phenomenology. We need to see how psychodynamic processes—which are processes in time—affect felt phenomena—which always involve spatially experienced objects of perception. We first consider how specifically the loss of space leads to deficient emptiness.pace is lost as the mind takes self-image for identity. We have seen that this leads to the building of boundaries in the openness of space. The final result is that instead of the experience of Being without mental images, one ends up with a mental image for an identity. So instead of space being pervaded by Being it gets filled with a self composed of many self-representations. Now, what is the phenomenon of space when it is filled with the self? In other words, what is the mind filled with the psychic structure? On the surface it is the usual experience of the personality with its various manifestations. But, at the core, it is the deficient emptiness. The Void, pg. 135 We Know Ourselves From the Veil of Memory The mental images and attitudes that determine how we experience ourselves form the basis of a whole implicit worldview. We also experience ourselves only indirectly, as a subject experiencing an object. We are aware of ourselves as an object like other objects, seeing ourselves in the world as one object among others. Even when one is aware of oneself as perceiver or subject, this perception is different from the direct sense of our facticity, from the fact of our existence. We still know ourselves from the veil of memory. The Point of Existence, pg. 21

Wart removal for a butchered rabbit Modern day health care needn't be so complicated. When I was a boy of about 15. Doctor Fried, the family Doctor removed a couple of warts off my hand. He actually burned them off with a tool that looked like a sortering iron. My mother did his bookkeeping. So I was around him more than usual. When he got done, he said, " How about you butcher one of your rabbits and bring to me". I said. "No problem. He knew I was in the rabbit business. I started raising rabbits when I was about 12 years old. I usually sold live rabbits to a buyer when they were about 10 -12 weeks old. One thing that stuck with me about raising rabbits is shoveling the manure from under the hutches would absolutely cleanse and drain your sinuses. I guess its ammonia that comes out of the manure piles. Breath very much at all and your nose will be running and your eyes will tear. Here's a short article that is quite good. https://online.diamondapproach.org/harmony-of-centers/

I'm being lazy and answering the question with quotes out of the Ridhwan Glossary. But let me first start by saying I don't know! But I'm leery of all this talk about imagination. Unconstrained imagination bolsters self deception. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Here's some food for thought though from the mind of A.H. Almaas Self-Aware Consciousness At some point, however, you come to the recognition of what we call “essential truth.” Essential truth is not an insight about something but the apprehending of the immediate reality of the moment. This immediate reality is presence—the quality of beingness—as when one is experiencing an essential aspect, such as Compassion or Strength. We find out here that one of the most important characteristics of essential presence is that it is self-aware consciousness. Absolute Being So when we say Absolute, we mean Being -- Essence with no qualities, before qualities come into Being. Then you know it's the source of everything, because you see everything arising from it. Diamond Heart Book Three, pg. 165 Absolute Dimension Because the absolute is not simply nonbeing, we experience it as a field, an expanse, and not simply nonbeing. To understand this we need to make a particular differentiation explicit. We have been using two terms interchangeably, namely absolute and absolute dimension. Strictly speaking, the absolute is the ultimate nature of Reality, and it is beyond dimensions; for dimensions are the experience of manifestation. Yet, we do experience the absolute as a dimension, boundless and infinite, an infinity that contains and holds all manifestation, including the other boundless dimensions. We can say that the absolute is the unmanifest, the ultimate truth and mystery of Being, beyond all dimensions and qualities. But when it begins to manifest appearance, this manifestation appears as if in an expanse, an infinite and boundless expanse, that looks like black space. Manifestation appears always in the context of time and space. It always possesses an expanse in time and space. Therefore, when we witness appearance from this stance of the absolute we see an expanse appearing in a more vast, dark expanse, the absolute. We have the sense of the absolute as an expanse, as a vast infinite black space. The absolute appears in this perception as a boundless dimension that underlies all other dimensions. But in reality the absolute is beyond space and time, for it is beyond manifestation. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 394

Sometimes I’m just a horrible human being. My tendency to exaggerate when I write doesn’t really help that much. Hyperbole adds flavor but I’m noticing at times the negative influence it has. The power that language has in its influencing both one’s outer world and inner world as well. It’s been a bit of a blind spot of mine perhaps. A favorite Zen story or Koan ,,, The Voice of Happiness After Bankei had passed away, a blind man who lived near the master's temple told a friend; Since I am blind, I cannot watch a person's face, so I must judge his character by the sound of his voice. Ordinarily when I hear someone congradulate another upon his happiness or success, I also hear a secret tone of envy. When condolence is expressed for the misfortune of another, I hear pleasure and satisfaction, as if the one condoling was really glad there was something left to gain in his own world. "In all my experience, however, Bankei's voice was always sincere. Whenever he expressed happiness, I heard nothing but happiness, and whenever he expressed sorrow, sorrow was all I heard."

Overcoming cynicism I’m looking at my progess over a period of a 20 years. Twenty years ago my spiritual egotism was intact with buffers protecting and perpetuating the condition of what some call spiritual materialism. Around that time I had encountered a Teacher of the Fourth Way (esoteric Christianity). He pointed out,at various times, the presence of my inner Pharisee, which, by the way is synonymous with a Zen Devil or spiritual materialist. Guilt perpetuates self condemnation and as a result we extend that judgement to everyone we encounter. This projection stains our entire world. Self forgiveness sets everyone else free from our own condemnation. How wonderful it feels to discover everyone’s innocence including our own. The discovery of this state of consciousness is transient at first but to return to it is synonymous with what Gurdjieff called Self-Remembering. Everything in one’s perceptual field becomes vivified. You become lighthearted.

My I-Ching reading today. A part of it anyway. Hexagram 3 Line 5. Difficulties in blessing. A little perseverance brings good fortune. Great perseverance brings misfortune. Here, the difficulties encountered refer to the retreat of the Sage that occurs when the ego takes over a person's work on developing himself. The ego hopes, through ambitious and pious work, to be recognized by the Sage as "spiritual." The meaning of "a little perseverance" is to approach liberating the true self with modesty. This means not to forget to live one's life joyfully. The ego, in its striving, would drive the person to ascetic extremes and deprivations. This is the meaning of "great perseverance brings misfortune." The problem with the idea of "being spiritual" is that it contains all the self-flattery that maintains the ego as leader of the personality.It further divides a person's true nature into a higher and lower self, splitting his wholeness and placing spells on what is believed to be his"lower,"" or animal nature. Accepting this idea creates a fate, which is usually that of illness. This line can also indicate a person whose progress is blocked due to mistaken beliefs about the purpose of human life. It can refer to human-centered beliefs such as: "I have to do it all, "humans are the representatives of heaven on earth, "humans are responsible for making everything work," and "for creating order in the world." Such difficulties in blessing can be erased if he asks the Sage to help him rid himself of these mistaken beliefs. This will engage the Helper of Transformation to remove the blocks created by these phrases in his inner program.

Being authentic is overrated This goes against a basic premise I had when this Journal was started. I see the truth in what she says.

Do cats have linguistic awareness? I wouldn’t think so. Do cats have non-conceptual awareness? This sounds more likely. I just don't know, really. Just imaginative conjecture on my part.

@Francis777 I do that too. Welcome! If you prefer to not have comments from others. Just let us know.