Zigzag Idiot

I woke up this morning thinking about this post of yours from a few days ago and your style of relating. As I was pondering, this scene from MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN came to mind. ? Thanks for sharing. ?

Processing the worst of the shadow with a Psychotherapist In January of 2015 I was invited to a small group who were starting at the beginning of A Course IN MIRACLES. It was led by a Psychotherapist who had discovered ACIM in years past. This was his 5th or 6th time to go through it. I never had even looked at the text until that first meeting. I knew within few minutes that I was interested. Each week I drove 1 1/2 hours one way to go to the meetings. After about a month, I told Jim, the group organizer/Psychotherapist that I would like to schedule a weekly appointment to do some shadow work. For the first couple of appointments I just dumped everything I could bring out of my shadow. Traumas from childhood onward. Humiliations, hatreds, betrayals etc.,, Anthing that I could remember but wish I could forget or the worst of it, I told him. I knew he had been a therapist for years. So, I didn't hold back figuring he had heard it all. After about 6-8 weeks I felt that all I was doing at that point was needlessly stirring up emotional things. It felt good to just dump all that stuff on him and get his feedback and be done with it. If this idea appeals to you, I recommend it. Just find a therapist you feel ok with. Jim doesn't believe in all the new pharma. Says it's just a money maker needlessly perpetrated by big pharmaceuticals. I was on Paxil from about 2000 -2010 and quit them on my own. So I understand a little from different perspectives but I really feel the same as he does. Mostly because of him,,, A Professional in the field of psychotherapy. He sends out an email mini Column every week that I still subscribe to. This is it from last week. The Impossible Dream by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2019 Dr. Jim Rosen When you don’t love and appreciate yourself as a person, then you find yourself trying to please other people far too much of the time. You have this belief that if you try hard to be good (in the eyes of these other people), then they should recognize your worth, and then they’re supposed to respond with love, support and approval. So you do a lot for others, but the doing is to get something in return. Isn’t that the essence of selfishness – doing in order to get something? But you’re not quite able to completely please them, and they don’t quite give you what you really need. So you feel empty and resentful inside. And then you try even harder to please…Stop! When you develop self-love, you do what feels right and important on the inside, and you commence to give from your heart. This leads you to be truly giving – at times to yourself, at times to others. This is where you can live in a state of balance and where the emptiness and resentment can fall away. Very similar messages here:

I don't know about eternity. I've not had any experience about it. I understand infinity to some degree because I've had an experience about it. it's not that I don't believe those who say with certainty that soul is eternal. I've just not realized it. Conceptually, I can envision 'Existence' as possibly being eternal. But soul and existence are two different things. Maybe they're not and possibly that would resolve the disparity for me. I've assumed most of my life that we each are a soul who is eternal. Pondering on it though, revealed some assumptions that went unnoticed in the past. The Teaching Gurdjieff gave that most are born with only a possibility of developing a soul makes a lot of sense in some ways, as horrible as that idea sounds. Centers and chakras can be confusing. They are two different things which sometimes are the same thing but most of the time they are not quite the same thing. The 3 transpersonal chakras are sometimes said to be around the knees, feet, and above the head. I think some traditions suggests maybe even dozens mini chakras that have specific locations in the body. There are three centers. No, there are four. No, actually there are five. When the belly or instinctIve center is subdivided into three as some do. That makes five. Hara or belly center divided by three-- The instinctive with autonomic nervous system and controlling bodily functions and processes. The instinctive/moving part (all learned movements like the ability to walk.) The sexual center.

@Anderz I'm enjoying reading your Journal. Somebody in a recent YouTube gave Descartes - "I think, therefore I am", as something like the birth or definition of the modern ego and separate sense of self. Specifically, the neurotic self in the head. It may have even been Leo. I can't remember. If someone else remembers hearing this and who said it, please let me know.

6-10-2019 42. Increasing. Line 2 61. Inner Truth

The essence of the idea of Karma-Yoga is to meet with unpleasant things equally with pleasant things. That is, in practicing Karma-Yoga, one does not seek always to avoid unpleasant things, as people ordinarily do. Life is to be met with non-identifying. When this is possible, life becomes one's teacher; in no other sense can life become a teacher, for life taken as itself is meaningless, but taken as an exercise it becomes a teacher. It is not life that is a teacher, but one's relation through non-identifying makes it become a teacher. Nothing can change being so much as this practice - namely, to take the unpleasant things in life as an exercise. (Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, Vol. 1) In other words, it's about learning how to not take occurrences in life in a negative way. It's a process of purifying the heart.

One form of which is spreading fear.

if you could change one thing about the culture you live in? Everyone's unconscious imagination which pollutes impartial objective thinking. What Gurdjieff referred to as Kundabuffer.

A conscious politician would understand the human tendency which manifests most often as an unconscious compulsion, of feeding on negative emotions.

I haven't read that one but I bet it is good. I like his wife's book - A Diamond in your Pocket - Gaganji

Is there a hierarchy of consciousness? Yes. Not a dominator hierarchy but instead a growth hierarchy. "Cows scream louder than carrots when you kill them. That's why it's better to eat carrots than cows". - Ken Wilber quote There are degrees of being and degrees of consciousness. Teil Swan, Matt Kahn, or Leo has has a much higher degree of being and higher degree of consciousness than angry crybaby President Trump. This is just my vote and opinion though.

Three good Enneagram books I recommend. The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home Introduction This book is not simply about the enneagram. It is about inner transformation. It is about understanding some of the major characteristics of our consciousness in the state of personality or ego—that of believing and taking ourselves to be the person who is the product of our personal history. It is also about the changes our inner atmosphere undergoes as we become free of that identification. And finally, it is about skillful means, as the Buddhists would say: how to orient ourselves so that this transformation has the possibility of becoming a reality. Obviously, these aims imply that most of us are living within inner confines of which we are unaware, and that there is much more to us and to our potential experience of reality than we experience within the perimeters of ego. It also implies that it is possible to expand our consciousness beyond these constraints. This has been the endeavor of spiritual seekers throughout the ages, based on an inner intuition, or perhaps direct experience in extraordinary moments of deeper dimensions beyond those of ordinary consciousness. ,,,,,,,, Sandra Maitri's, "The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul" This review appeared in the 2003 July-August issue of New Dawn Magazine: ___________________________________ While the ideas inspiring the modern Enneagram concept can be traced at least as far back as classical Greek philosophy, the majority of material currently being taught about it, including the psychology of the nine Enneagram types, is the work of contemporary authors. In this sense, the Enneagram is not an established model, but a work-in-progress. Many fundamental ideas are shared by Enneagram formulators, but there are also significant differences and diverse theories about the types themselves, and the underlying philosophical base. A great deal of confusion even exists concerning the contributions made by different authors and teachers. The Enneagram was originally disseminated in the 1970s by enthusiasts passing around photocopied notes from Oscar Ichazo’s Arica School and Jesuit sources. These notes were not attributed to anyone, which made it extremely difficult to know who had authored them. As books were published, some clarity began to emerge, but even so, many assumed everything about the Enneagram belonged to an ancient “oral tradition” from the Sufis and was therefore in the public domain. For this reason, it is almost mandatory for a newcomer to read the work of students who received the first model of the teaching. The father of the modern Enneagram is Oscar Ichazo whose contributions were central to the development of the modern system. Ichazo linked the nine divine qualities or aspects found in Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, and mystical Christianity, to the Enneagram symbol. Most modern authors build their work on this model. Following this work was Claudio Naranjo, a student of Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy. Naranjo learned the Enneagram from Ichazo during his stay in Chile in 1970. He returned that year and began teaching the basic concepts to a small group in California. Naranjo combined his background in psychiatry with Ichazo’s teaching, and further developed the alignment between the nine types and modern clinical psychological categories, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) personality disorders, various defense mechanisms, and other personality theories. He developed additional ideas, and further applications for the 27 combinations of Enneagram types and Instincts. With the exception of A.H. Almaas and Sandra Maitri, no major Enneagram teacher or author has ever been a student of either Ichazo or Naranjo. More often than not, teachers and writers are part of the obscure and virtually untraceable line stemming from self styled teachers with their own methods and aims. While some of these may be quite progressive, the majority do not understand the concepts completely and interpret the Enneagram without knowledge of its essential properties. Sandra Maitri, author of The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram, is known as one of the Ridhwan School’s principal teachers who, with Almaas, taught the Enneagram system by Claudio Naranjo over twenty-five years ago. Her vast experience and direct knowledge and transmission of the initial concepts make her a formidable source for students interested in a different application of technique. The Enneagram has gained popularity in recent years as a system of understanding ourselves and others in which nine basic personality types – each having specific cognitive, affective, and behavioural characteristics – can be discerned. Nearly every modern Enneagram-related work treats the system only as a typology of personality, and while an extremely valuable psychological tool, its deeper purpose is largely unexplored. This is precisely where Maitri’s book is set apart. Rather than simply presenting the Enneagram as a definitive psychological typology, she seeks to illustrate the spiritual applications, and convey the original spirit and purpose of this body of knowledge as a tool for spiritual development. The Enneagram’s true function, Maitri explains, is to “point the way to who we are beyond the level of personality, a dimension of ourselves that is infinitely more profound, more interesting, and more rewarding.” Maitri shows how the Enneagram charts the disconnection from our inner depths, how each personality type develops as a part of this estrangement, and how traversing the inner territory particular to our type can bring fulfillment and meaning to our lives by bringing this deeper dimension to consciousness. She explores the nine types, the subtypes, the wings, and the inner movement of the Enneagram, all in the context of spiritual development. She includes a clear explanation of the concepts and methods for personal application, including a chapter on identifying your personal Enneagram type and the implications for your own development. For the reader interested in the development of the soul through an intimate knowledge of oneself, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram is perfect. While so many spiritual models focus on the external factors, this is one of the effective few that find the path to spiritual development within the mind and personality of the individual. – Robert Buratti

@Identity ? I'm with you on this. Felt like this was an appropriate topic to share this Prayer Rob Brezsny's - A Prayer For You. I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods, the God beyond all Gods, the Girlfriend of God, the Teacher of God, the Goddess who invented God, and what I pray is: Oh Goddess Who Never Kills But Only Changes: I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words might move You to unleash ferocious blessings on all the beauty and truth fans who've tuned in. I pray that You'll grant them what they don't even know they want. Not just the boons they think they need but everything they've been afraid to even imagine or wish for. Oh Goddess, You Wealthy Anarchist Burning Heaven to the Ground: The divine chameleons out there in sacred space don't even know they're crazy. Please use Your blinding magic to help them see they're all wildly creative geniuses too big for their own bodies. Guide them to realize that they're all completely different from what they think they are and more exciting than they can possibly imagine. And make it immoral, illegal, irrelevant, unpatriotic and totally tasteless for them to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for them. Oh Goddess You Sly Universal Virus with No Opinion: I beg that You help all the personal growth-addicts that are reading this prayer to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation not destruction. I pray that You teach them the difference between self-destructive self-control and liberating self-control. Awaken in them the power to do the half-right thing when it's impossible to do the totally right thing. Arouse the Wild Woman within them ~ even if they're men. Give them bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. And, oh Goddess, You Pregnant Criminal Who Scorns All Mediocre Longing: Inspire all the original sinners out there to love their enemies in case their friends turn out to be jerks. Provoke them to throw away things that make them believe they're better than everyone else. Show them how much fun it is to brag about what they can't do and don't have. Most of all, brainwash them with Your freedom, so that they never love their own pain more than anyone else's pain. Oh Goddess, you Psychedelic Mushroom Cloud at the Center of All Our Brains: These budding Demeters and Inannas and Buddhas and Christs deserve everything they need and much much more. Please arrange for a racehorse to be named after them, or a boulevard or river or thousand-year-old storm on another planet. Help them win the battle against time, and learn to talk the language of the most scientific angels, and master the zen of temper tantrums, and get a fabulous mommy and daddy in their next incarnation. Teach them to push their own buttons and unbreak their own hearts and right their own wrongs and sing their own songs and be their own wives and save their own lives. Bless them with lucid dreams while they're wide awake and solar energy-operated sex toys that work in the dark and a vacuum cleaner for their magic carpet and a knack for avoiding other people's hells [!] and a secret admirer who's not a psychotic stalker and a thousand masks that all fit their face perfectly and their own 900 number so that everyone has to pay to talk to them. Oh Goddess, you Dumb, Fast, Infinitely Wide River of Electricity, You Smart Slow Smoldering Lump of Angel Fat Left Over from the Big Bang, You Ghostly Snake Who Loves Inventive Tragedy and Sophisticated Superstition, You Cool Furnace That Incinerates the Props of Our Nightmares Much Too Slowly, You Creator of Happy Purgatories Where Impeccably Unironic Apocalypse Salesmen Preach Christian Satanism and Rosicrucian Baseball Players from the Middle Ages Dream Politically Cracked Dreams That Reveal the News in More Exact Metaphors Than Any Newspaper: I pray that You provide all the global village idiots that are reading this prayer with a license to bend all laws, rules, and traditions that keep them apart from the things they love. Show them how to purge themselves of the wishy-washy wishes that keep them distracted from their divine desires. And teach them that they can have anything they want if they'll only ask for it in an unselfish tone of voice. Oh Goddess Who Gives Us So Much Love and Pain Together That Our Morality is Always on the Verge of Collapsing: I beg You to cast a spell to nullify all bad spells that have ever been cast on all the beautiful love geniuses out there. Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to them no matter how long they've suffered from it, and even if they've grown accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship. Conjure an aura of protection around them so that they will receive an early warning if they're ever about to act in such a way that would attract another hex or plague or voodoo into their lives. And now, dear God of Gods, God Beyond All Gods, Sister Lover of God, Mother of God, Goddess who invented God: I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these mysterious moments You have impregnated the dream glands of all the beauty and truth fans out there with the most compassionate lust and smartest love You can imagine. And if there is anything I've forgotten which will help their cause, please flash it into my imagination in the coming days and months and decades, and motivate me to perform any tricks or carry out any project that will encourage an abundance of sweaty creativity to flow through them, inspiring them to become more wildly disciplined, erotically feminist, aggressively sensitive, demonically compassionate, ironically sincere, lyrically logical, insanely poised, orgiastically lucid, macho feminist. Amen. Awomen. Ommmmmmm and halle-fucking-lujah.

6-9-2019 13 Associating with People. Lines 1,4, and 6 39. Meeting Obstructions A bit of council from the changing lines, paraphrased -- We go astray in trying to fit ourselves to a role or self image. They become a prison cell. Especially roles approved of by Culture whereby in gaining approval we have to deny the inner truth of our feelings which amounts to abandoning the strength of our true nature. Through our heart and feelings we can hear the voice of Conscience.

@Anderz What you expressed is almost exactly the case AH Almaas makes in his book The Point Of Existence The Point of Existence is the Essential Identity Self-realization fulfils the meaning of our lives. The true significance of all experience is the essential Presence. The point of existence is the Essential Identity. It is profoundly significant that the Essential Identity is experienced directly as a brilliant point of Presence, a point of Being, which is true existence. We can say, then, that meaninglessness is pointlessness, and the feeling of pointlessness is an indirect awareness of the absence of the essential point, the Essential Identity. The Point of Existence, pg. 227

6-8-2019 55. Abundance. From the text- "Be not sad, be like the sun at midday."

Possible platform of ideas for conscious politics. Please add more,,, or more questions. What message can be given to fundamentalists regardless of Religion which instills trust that essentially -- they can have their stage of the spiral How to counteract the old paranoid notions about global citizenship. The shadow of The John Birch Society and dark cloud around a New World Order. Instead, how to join together the Conscious Circle of Humanity...? What kind of idea or message can give others trust regardless of Spiral Dynamics model worldview?

On top of that. Isn't there an old saying about the conquerors' writing the history books? -- rhetorical or not Not to mention the editing of religious texts ,,,

On 11/19/2018 at 1:41 PM, abrakamowse said: I mean, like actors... playing our roles. We really don't know what to do, we just reflect on what others do and we respond accordingly with all our processed experiences. But we have to look into us to know what we are going to do next and in others, how others respond, etc... I just had that feeling looking interviews of actors. Everything seems mechanical. At the end of Leo's last video he mentions that you can't go forward with him, from here onward unless you really do the work of Observation. He also mentions that it wasn't easy.. Observing is in competition with acting. Our ego's/false personalities get a lot of coin from acting. Our inner wolf eats our inner lamb. Addendum- It's not that cut and dried though. There are fractal pieces ,,,, in degrees of being awake, making trouble while we're napping and further aggravating identifications, the experience of a return to being Being from being thinking with the usual back and forth,,,etc.,, On the lighter side. We experience and have unexpected realizations. Usually paid for in advance though, through some kinds of effort.

At the end of Leo's last video he mentions that you can't go forward with him, from here onward unless you really do the work of Observation. He also mentions that it wasn't easy.. Observing is in competition with acting. Our ego's/false personalities get a lot of coin from acting. Our inner wolf eats our inner lamb.

6-7-2019 25. Innocence Not Expecting/Not Projecting Line 2 10. Conducting Oneself

Good honest questions you ask but more important is flowboy's right to let his subjectivity express itself in however he chooses within his Journal. If this begins to be shutdown by others assertions or questions, then often the process of inquiry is hampered. Most especially in times of inner turmoil.

Im going to make a case for assigning value to the instinctive center that is equal to the intellectual and emotional center. I remember Leo mentioning in his last video how intellegent the instinctive centers are. I think his comment was in reference to the function of the body and autonomic nervous system. A bird building a nest is also a good example of the intelligence of this center. This innate knowledge that is carried in each specific species with their different kinds of nests. The speed of the nervous system and the animal instincts are another consideration. This is seen in car wrecks and disasters of various kinds. Or in a close call traffic incident when our animal instinct will suddenly make the fine adjustments necessary to steer the car through a gap of debree that has two inches to spare on each side at 60 mph. It happens faster than we can think. It is also faster than emotions. In the case of the near miss, we don't get scared or mad until we get down the road just a little. If the debris in the road was caused by humans only after the fact do we start thing what we're going to say to the son-of-a-bitch that's responsible!! The emotions are so much quicker than the intellect, that's why are temper gets us in trouble or makes a fool out of us. Having sensation in body awareness is a natural tool for counter balancing and balancing the intellectual emotional complex The Belly Quality of Basic Trust The presence of basic trust indicates that you have the innate sense that life is fundamentally benevolent, and that that benevolence exists independent of you and your actions. You will have this sense to the extent that your grounding in the universe has not been disturbed. The relative presence or absence of basic trust is a belly quality, something one’s whole being is either grounded in or not. The disturbance of basic trust is a significant factor in ego development because the perspective of ego is diametrically opposed to the sense of basic trust. The ego’s perspective arises out of a lack of this trust. It is based on distrust, on paranoia, on fear, on the conviction that you’re not going to be adequately taken care of and that the universe is not there to hold and take care of you in the ways that you need. This conviction causes you to believe that you have to engage in all kinds of manipulations and games to get your needs met and to make things work out. Facets of Unity, pg. 25 Distinguishing Physical Sensation from Essential Substance The capacity to sense oneself must become so refined that the individual can discriminate between physical sensation and the sensation of essential substance. It is not enough that the mind be quiet. It is also necessary for the body to be sensitive. The mind can be quiet while the body is deadened. The body has to be awakened so that the center of sensing, the belly center, can be activated. The belly center, or what Gurdjieff called the physical center, is the center of sensing for all parts of the body. Its deepest function is the subtle sensing, the sensing of essential presence, that the Sufis call the organ for touch. Touch is, in a sense, the most intimate of the physical senses. The skin must be directly against an object to touch it. There is no intermediary medium, like sound for hearing or light for seeing. So this subtle capacity is a very intimate one. Accurately speaking, it is sensing essence by being essence. It is the most direct way of perception. This capacity of touch, connected with the belly center, is very intimately connected with the embodiment of essence. It is the body center; its mode of perception is embodiment. Here, perception as touch, and being, are the same act. So this capacity is the most important one. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 130 Maybe more later. I'm sleepy.

6-5-2019 53 Developing the True Self 6-6-2019 59. Dissolution/Dissolving