Zigzag Idiot

It's counterintuitive but experiencing a deeper love happens when we allow ourselves to let deep hatred rise to the surface. A special kind of hatred towards innocence. In that Almaas work helped me discover this phenomena and the way out of it. The guilt that returns with the pendulum is a part of the glue like nastiness of getting free of it. Hatred and the Beast In fact, when you experience the Beast, you might even experience yourself as a kind of devil, with horns, red eyes, a tail, and so on. Many people actually experience this structure explicitly. You feel as if you sprout horns and a tail and you’re full of fury and hate. You just want to annihilate. If you do act out your hatred, of course it is destructive. But many people believe that just feeling the hatred will be destructive. Feeling the hatred can lead some people to act out physically and to be destructive, and that needs to be avoided. But most people—unless they have difficulty knowing what behavior is appropriate—tend to resist acting out the hatred even as they begin to directly experience the Beast. Facets of Unity, pg. 49 Loving Light and the Beast The distrust that is fundamental to the egoic perspective is based on not experiencing the goodness of the universe. From this distrust arises what we call the Beast, the part of the ego that is not only frustrated and angry, but also hates what is good and positive. When you are experiencing the Beast, if there is any love, you hate it and want to destroy it. “Where has it been? Where was it when I needed it?” or “God is supposed to be all-loving, all-merciful, all-compassionate, but if that’s true, why am I suffering so much and why is the world such a mess?” This part of the ego has the consciousness of a young child and it can’t rationalize these things as adults do, consoling and explaining to themselves that, “God is testing me.” Even though a child might not conceptualize it, the thinking is something like, “If God isn’t here when I really need Him, God is no good. If I stay open and vulnerable, I’ll get clobbered again, so what good is He? I don’t want Him—I hate Him. He just makes more trouble for me—I trust and then I get hurt. I had better just depend on myself and forget about Him. No more trusting—that’s it.” Facets of Unity, pg. 48 Resolving the Beast Resolving the issue of the Beast has a salutary effect on the soul’s relation to her true nature. It opens up a deeper level of appreciation, love, and valuing of essence, and allows the soul to see it as sheer beauty, as what makes everything beautiful. Essence’s value becomes more objective, in the understanding that essence is valuable not because of what it does and gives to the individual soul, but because of its mere existence. True nature, the essence of the soul, is valuable, is worthy of appreciation and love, not because it gives her something, not because it adds to her, not because it liberates her, but because it is beautiful. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 286 The Beast The process leads to deep hurt and abandonment and the understanding of the origins of the Beast, or hatred of the good, in the early oral frustrations and deprivations. One of the steps in this process of working through is the recognition of how this issue depends partly on the reification of universal or divine Being. Being is personified; the soul’s relationship to it assumes the form of an object relation between a separate individual soul and a separate powerful entity one may call God. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 285 The Beast and Separateness The Beast turns out to be a particular crystallization of the ego principle, the conviction about and identification with separateness. Separateness is what truly opposes divine love, and the devil's hatred is the final natural outcome of such separateness. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 286 The Beast is Not an Ultimate or Eternal Form The soul suffused by divine love, forming an inseparable expression of its bountiful resplendence, is the divine offspring, the prince of light. The soul disconnected and alienated from Being, especially from its loving light, becomes the prince of darkness. It is important to see that even the Beast is the result of the reaction of the soul to her experience. It is not an ultimate form, nor an eternal one. Hence there is no eternal damnation, and no absolute evil. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 286 Transforming Hatred into Essential Power The Beast is a very specific issue related to the essential quality of Power. The essential Power of the soul is caught up in, and distorted by, the hatred and pride in the Beast structure. When you allow the black hatred is when you may feel yourself become the devil—a giant, black and powerful demon with tremendous pride and destructive hatred. You might tower over the city, looking at it and laughing. You might be filled with a powerful, destructive, cold, calm, and calculating hatred. You might experience the absolute insignificance of everything you see. Allowing this energetic structure to arise, and understanding its origins, illuminates deep issues about early levels of the soul’s disconnection from love. If you are able to feel the hatred without resistance or acting out, the hatred will transform into essential Power. This Power can penetrate the delusions that keep the ego’s reactivity in place and it can allow the soul to become still enough so that the quality of love can affect its state and its perception. Facets of Unity, pg. 50

When I was 7 years old I awoke from a dream and knew without any doubt at all what the world felt like from a girl's perspective. Although being just a prepubescent girl in the dream, there was a nonspecific boy whom I felt great love for. Whenever in the past I've tried relating this dream, it was always twisted by others into a sign of repressed homosexuality. In my local culture there is a lot of polarity thinking. It's either this or that. In spite of the dream, as Ken Wilbur puts it, I'm a hard wired heterosexual. It doesn't help that my nature is somewhat androgynous and I'm a heretic who openly associates with gay people. This local culture, for the most part, when saying the name Obama or the term liberal, a negative tone is used and it is just assumed the listener is also of like mind. So, in spite of having the dream and being somewhat androgynous in attitude, I grew up as an ordinary man pig. Actually, I'm quite a horndog. That's kind of the rule for Adrenal types though. From Maurice Nicoll: THE FEELING OF NOTHINGNESS “When the Work says that a man must come to realize his own nothingness before he can be re-born, it does not mean that he must humble himself and so on, but that he must by long self-observation actually begin to realize that he is nothing and that there is no such person as himself. The object of this is to get into a position, psycho- logically speaking, between the opposites...Why is it so important to get somewhere into the centre of the pendulum and not swing to and fro? Because here, between the opposites, lie all the possibilities of growth. Here influences from higher levels can reach us. Here, in this place where one can feel one’s own nothingness (and where one is therefore free from contradictions), influences and meanings com- ing from higher centres, which have no contradictions, can be felt. Not regarding yourself as good or bad, not priding yourself on being just or otherwise, not thinking you are well-treated or badly-treated, not being caught by either movement through identifying, you come into this mid-position. This is not easy! With personality active, it is impossible.

My chart has a yod. I need to find an astrologer who is good at interpreting Yod's

Another good one Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi ("the leading researcher into ‘flow states’" —Newsweek) demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives. https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202

Law of Octaves or Law of seven - Golum is uncollected. Golum has no control. How to overcome being an unguided projectile or an 'unguided Golum'. Knowledge helpful for completing any kind of aim in spiritual work. Ted Nottingham 14 minutes: Longer 1 hour version

Martin can be a little harsh,,, but he makes some good points.

Fires of alchemy through an old metaphorical wood stove. Ocke points out how mostly the universal mishap with the fifth chakra, Vishuda, is that it is stuck open. I liken it to an old wood stove with the damper between the fire pot and the open sky being stuck open seized up. Most of us talk too much. Some worse than others. Some people suffer from cyclical rounds of word vomit. I feel for these creatures, I used to take it on part time, you might say. Anyway, a good many of us blow hot air until we're exhausted. Understanding essence types can answer why some people only have to talk a few minutes and they use up their days quota. Juxtaposed with someone who can rattle for hours and not exhaust their day's quota. But then the quiet one can accomplish tasks that completely intimidate the erudite extrovert. Through inquiry, I've found this to be the case, as Ocke wrote about in his book, Higher Being Bodies. When we become Master of our 'chimney damper', it's only a matter of time before our third eye blinks. Ajgna reaches it potential peak at 42 years. When it opens up we become paranormal.

Yeah! Leo mentions Ouspensky in this one. The Youtube just above, from Ted Nottingham, has been a student of 'The Work', as its called. Gurdjieff, Ouspensky stuff. Maurice Nicoll, who I've referred to and have quoted some worked intensely in France with Gurdjieff for a couple of years and then was a student of Ouspensky for many years in England. Ocke de Boer is a Long time student and interpreter of Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson, Gurdjieffs Magnum Opus. I don't recommend trying to read 'The Tales'. Read first the students and modern students books on 'The Tales' and of Gurdjieff. That is, if your drawn to this. If not, don't. I haven't made a dent in watching all of Leo's videos. I been hanging out with the Christian Contemplatives but I feel more at home here. In a way, the Contemplative Christian Movement seems a little bit gravity bound by the vast numbers of Evengelical Fundamentalist Churches. Or as Robert deRopp phrased it, the "Judeo Christian guilt cults". i think the future of Christian Practice will take the Modern and re-emerging Contemplatives 'discoveries' of Sitting Meditation and cultivating mindfulness. If if you want to try Gurdjieff, Read Meetings With Remarkable Men. Here's a sample about him trying to get through the Himalayas- "The first thing next day, with the consent of our consciences, degenerated like those of all contemporary people and corresponding exactly to the requirements of Hell, we killed all the goats, which only the day before we had regarded as our sincere friends and associates in overcoming the difficulties of the journey. After this admirable Christian-Mohammedan manifestation, one of us began to cut their meat into small pieces in order to roast it." Anyway, Hooray Leo! I'm only two or three years behind,,,,,

Me too. Heres a link to the urtext http://a.courseinmiracles.com/#gsc.tab=0 also another favorite specifically about the 'mechanics of consciousness' STALKING THE WILD PENDULUM by Itztok Bentov - Definitely,,,, a favorite book Title. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stalking+the+wild+pendulum

Birds of a feather A flock of seagulls or a murder of crows,,,,,? I've always been an abstract thinker myself. Often translating into being misunderstood. In youth this being misunderstood often propelled me into a downward spiral (psychic entropy) Understanding Wilburs description of the pretrans fallacy was good medicine for me. Having my attention dispersed spawns uncontrolled imagination and prerational imagination and downward spiral. Controlled or creative imagination can flower an awareness of synchronicity and finding personal meaning. Gurdjieff's writings showed me the value of being in a collected state (having attention collected) which is often determined by Directed attention vs. Dispersed attention. i have to adjust from Itoklanoz awareness into Fulasnitamnian awareness every morning when I get out of bed

Ackashic records - Kesdjan (Astral) body of the earth From Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson: page 293-294 “A Teleoghinoora is a materialized idea or thought which after its arising exists almost eternally in the atmosphere of that planet on which it arises. “Teleoghinooras can be formed from such a quality of being-contemplation as only those three-brained beings have and can actualize, who have coated their higher being bodies in their presences and who have brought the perfecting of the Reason of their higher being part up to the degree of the sacred ‘Martfotai.’ “And the sequential series of being-ideas, materialized in this way, concerning any given event, are called ‘Korkaptilnian thought tapes.’ “It seems that the said Korkaptilnian thought tapes concerning the history of the arising of the learned society Akhaldan were, as I found out much later, deliberately fixed by a certain ‘Eternal Individual,’ Asoochilon, now a saint, who became coated in the common presence of a three-brained being named Tetetos who arose on your planet on the continent of Atlantis and who had existed there four centuries before the second great ‘Transapalnianperturbation.’ “These Korkaptilnian thought tapes are never destroyed as long as the given planet exists, which is in what is called the ‘tempo of movement of the prime arising’; and they are subject to none of those transformations from any cosmic causes whatsoever to which all other cosmic substances and cosmic crystallizations are periodically subject. “And however long a time may have already passed, every three-brained being in whose presence there has been acquired the ability to enter into the being-state called ‘Soorptakalknian contemplation’ can perceive and cognize the texts of these Korkaptilnian thought tapes.

I underline a sentence or mark a paragraph. Then write the page # on the 2 or 3 blank pages at very end of most books. With one sentence description.

Watched this today. Leo articulates how completely 'identified' we get. The necessity of thinking for oneself. Articulates 'identifying' with Internalized images. Without using the phrase Cultural consensus trance he articulates the Cultural concensus trance/spiritual sleep Presence of Being as Absolute Stillness Peace: It is not an emotional state or merely the absence of conflict; it is rather the presence of stillness, which is an aspect of Essence. It is the Presence of Being as absolute stillness and calmness. This stillness is not experienced as dull or vague, but as an exquisitely alive kind of consciousness. Peace involves the cessation of the torturous ego activity, with its hopes, and desires, efforts and resistances. That is why it is often equated with ego death. Peace is actually both death and life in the same consciousness. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 313

A piece of this mornings ICHING reading/divination. This a revised ICHING that removes Patriarchal dominance and endorses feeling as necessary for a true balanced intelligence. Notice the use of the term 'cultural ego'. http://hanna-moog.squarespace.com/books-more-1/i-ching-oracle I got hexagram 1 changing line 4 from changing line 4 - second hexagram of 9 from which the following excerpt was taken. I think there are free ebooks to be found, available for download

This is an excellent ceremony for a group of friends, but can also be done alone. Mere curiosity will not bring you a profound experience of the primal powers. A real need and honest intent is necessary to unite matter and energy. If you are overwhelmed and disturbed by a cluster of problems, you might try this method to center yourself and call for cosmic assistance. With more experience you might add the other directions to the five discussed above and call all ten powers, adding the helpers of the SE, SW, NE and NW to the ceremony of the directions. Sincere utilization of this American ritual prior to a feast will transform a mundane party into a spiritual celebration that is uplifting to all. Drinking and talking before the ceremony is common to help you relax, but eating should wait until afterwards. Also from http://www.chanceandchoice.com/course-overview/global-consciousness/ Zigzag Idiot- Based on Lakota Calling of the 10 Directions (powers) Template for creating your own Spacial Ritual ,,,,

In today's world, man and woman must become equal, so too must time and space. We can no longer afford to live in a male dominated society, nor one that is dominated by time over space. Everywhere we look we see clocks, they are even manacled to our wrists. But where are the compasses? The need for equality of space and time, the feminine and masculine powers, is confirmed by the scientific understanding of the necessary relationship between space and time. Einstein and other modern physicists proved that one cannot exist without the other, that time is relative and space is curved. Neither time nor space exist by themselves. In reality there is only the combination of both - space/time. So too, the dominance of "Father Time" over "Mother Earth" must now end. The long lost rituals of sacred space must be renewed. To regain the sacred dimension of space in our time we must look beyond the religious festivals and rituals we know. We must turn to the earliest shamanic cultures of the earth. From: http://www.chanceandchoice.com/course-overview/global-consciousness/ In Zigzag Idiots words- Integration of both hemispheres indigenous culture rituals - Marriage of the Lakota and the IChing ,,,,,, 10 Directions Ritual for opening up the vertical dimensions integrated with the four elements/functions of consciousness Scale of Being from Crystal-mineral-plant-animal- Human - Spiritual Ancestors-nature spirits-angels-muses-God E In the East, at Dawn the sun shines - heaven rises. It is the direction of renewal, of revelation and enlightenment by the spirit of creation. The Power of the East is Fire. In the I Ching it is the trigram of Awareness, the sign of heaven. W In the West at dusk the earth rises. Eventually you will lie down for sleep in a horizontal position. The whole body is in touch with the earth. You relinquish all worries and thoughts of the day. Letting go and becoming empty makes you receptive. In deep sleep you receive and integrate the germs of light from all suns in the Universe, the stars. Integrate here means affirming. The Power of the West is Crystals' letting go and affirming. The correspondence is with the I Ching trigram Willing, which is also the sign of the earth. The West will clarify the attitude of affirming your existence and task on earth. S South is midday. You need to shine as the sun at midday, to trust in yourself and others - to trust in Soul. You need the innocence of a child, forgetting the failures of the past. The spirit of the South bestows innocence and trust, attributes of plant-life trust in growth. In the course of the year the Southpoint is the winter equinox, the festival of the innocent child. The Power of the South is in plants, in Trees. In the I Ching the South is the trigram of Soul. N The North - thinking - relates us to the animal world, our teachers in strategy. The spirit of the North bestows wisdom and clarity, if our thinking surges from the polar star to merge again with its center. It is the wisdom in doing. Animals are the Power of the North. In the I Ching it is the trigram of Thinking. C Center/Down. If you direct your attention to the four directions, and also to front-back-left-right, you will necessary center yourself. Five signifies your centered self and that of all others who are centered. In the esoteric traditions humanity is always identified with the number five. Its Power is the Sacred Earth. There is no I Ching correspondence. Centered also means to be an axis between heaven and earth. But to become a co-creator of evolution you need the support of the spirits 6, 7, 8 and 9. SE Six are the teachers of humanity, the Ancestors who paved the spiritual path up to the present. They make for a continuity in spiritual evolution of human history. In the South East everyone can discover and establish contact with his or her ancestors. To a musician it might be the spirit of Bach, to a mathematician the ancestral link might be to Pythagoras, to others it might be Albert Schweitzer, Jesus Christ, Moses, or whoever gives you strength and understanding to follow your own path. The ancestor you find will include you in the spiritual family and link you to the "Golden Chain". They paved the way for your special work on earth. They do not give you directions, you create your own, but they give you strength to pioneer your new link in the chain. The Power of the South East is the Ancestors. The I Ching trigram is Spirit. SW Seven are the spirits of our physical world of incarnated existence: the Elementals. Here the elements - Earth, Air, Water and Fire - are part of our survival, our health, our daily activities and success. As with the seven chakras they represent our agents operating in three realms - Body, Soul and Spirit. On the dream level they are called Trolls - spirits of the soil (sensing) who maintain our existence; Dwarfs - spirits of the air (thinking) who help us to surmount obstacles; Fairies - spirits of the waters (feeling) who stimulate our power of wish and endeavor; Elves - spirits of fire (willing), of serenity and joy, who help us to celebrate life as a luminous dream. These Nature Spirits can give you courage to go forward into the unknown. The Power of the South West is the Nature Spirits and the trigram is Body. NW Eight is in our world the principal of underlying consistency in the midst of change. It is the grid or underlying structure in which change takes place. This is the structure which remains constant while all else changes. We feel this as a deep desire for harmony, for participation in a kind of infinite stability. The spirits of the North West have been defined as angels or cosmic helpers who bridge the finite and the infinite. We contact them to base our transitory actions on the underlying eternal laws and thereby generate harmony in ourselves and our surroundings. It is the Power of Angels and the trigram of Feeling. NE Nine are the Inspirers. They are the agents of change in the microcosm, the macrocosm, as well as in the human world of speech, action and experience. The combination of nine faculties generates all possible action and transformation. As Gurdjieff said, whoever understands the nine can do. The North East, which lies between the enlightening inspiration of the East and the wisdom of the North, conveys the ninefold actualizing inspiration by which we become co-creators in evolution. These inspirers were called the "Muses". They do not help, but they empower our ninefold faculty of actualization. It is the Power of the Muses and the I Ching trigram of Sensing. C Center/Up. With the Ten we anchor our mind in the center. We are in communion with above and below, heaven and earth. We invoke the spirit of the "Man in the Universe". He is the archetype of the possible human, of humanity. He is the aspect of the divine in whose image we are fashioned, the mold. In the center we invoke the sacred unifying power. There is no trigram correspondence.

It seems like I get most of my 'downloads' from above while standing in a hot shower at the end of the day.

Interesting idea about the suicide containers. If I had an advanced terminal condition of some kind with only a few months to live and a likelyhood of a lot of physical pain. Considering also my family and sparing them the trauma of dealing with my slow painful death. In some instances, to me the idea has merit. If it's at the point where I really feel a fast decline occurring. We should have a right to sovereignty over our bodies. Maybe have my rotting corpse mix with some kind of compound where by just throwing in some tomato seeds in a few months,,, little Eucharist gardens develop,,,, Commune with cousin Joe after death,,,, Someone mentioned not editing their posts. That's a good one. Tough. That was a part of the deal in my last two Gurdjieff group online endeavors. Good luck Leonid! Thanks for sharing and trusting us.

I've referred to Jana Dixons Biology Of Kundalini in a couple of posts. I had the book when I went through some of this turmoil. i didn't read it through but only skipped around in it at the time. Sometimes rereading a certain topic or essay several times. Anyone who clicks on it and looks at the variety of links which comprise this book will begin to see the scope of her work. She's an entertaining character but so super-smart, I can barely follow in some spots. Really im rediscovering the book for myself. From some of the posts scattered around lately, I felt compelled to paste something I just read earlier. From her chapter Toxic Mind Theory http://www.biologyofkundalini.com/article.php@story=ToxicMindTheory.html The kundalini phenomena is so exaggerated and complex that parts of the experience obscure other parts. At the start of writing my book I was sure that kundalini was not involved in detoxification because the vividness of the psychic, creative, ecstatic and relational aspects of the experience obscured the neurological metamorphosis itself. Only after I had pieced together the framework of possible chemistry of metamorphosis did the large picture of neurological detoxification come into focus. Then I saw the many causes, signs and symptoms fall perfectly into place within a detoxification theory with its roots in infant development. That our primary wiring continues to inpact us throughout our life is beautifully expressed in the following example of a woman I interviewed. When I left home at 17 till the time my father died when I was 31, I went through cycles of anxiety that would build up till I went home to my parents, after which I would get sick. Like an addict I was using the negative chemistry of my parents relationship to force a detoxification crisis to relieve me of my anxiety; because the hypertonality my initial wiring was created within the context of that same toxic relationship of my parents. So I went through many cycles of hyperarousal/detoxification over this period. A kundalini awakening being a huge version of this same cyclic detoxification process. After my kundalini awakening, although I am far from thriving in emotional regulation, I don't go through this anxiety cycling/neuro-detox process anymore, which means my brain has fundamentally restructured itself. The awakening was sufficiently catastrophic that the base hypertonality to my brain was changed so the synapses don't get so cluttered with metabolic debris...this means that my neurology is cleansing itself as fast as it is messing house, because my hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis is not set on permanent emergency mode anymore. All other factors being the same, if I had been given adequate loving skin to skin and eye to eye contact in infancy to build up a lush connection between my right orbital complex and my limbic brain, then my emotional regulation would have been stronger and I would not build up the enormous psychic tension that propels kundalini to awaken.”

Everyone sees things from differing perspectives. I thought, Geez, man, I get disgusted about keeping my old car going too, but tomorrow is another day,,,

Ocke is not a guru. He has no spiritual egotism or spiritual materialism. His down to earth way of relating helps reveal the practicality of his statements, such as: "Sometimes you have to go run and hide so you don't get pecked to death" He embodies the wisdom of light heartedness. As well as relaxing with the transrational. Articulated well by Jana Dixon on her Biology of Kundalini website. http://www.biologyofkundalini.com/article.php@story=RelaxingwiththeTransrational.html We repress our guilt and negative emotions and then unconsciously project it back out onto the world. If we take things in a negative way, that points to the necessity for more processing. Very few humans completely purify their emotional center. They're called Saints. Saints are eaters of suffering. I'm not a Saint. I'm going to go run and hide now.

I like Ken Wilburs distillation down to just one line of development that runs through ego and trans personal line of development. "Just one," he pauses for dramatic effect in interview - "Developing the capacity for 'disinterested awareness." His words. Basically, what shores up the ego can then be used for metabolizing ego structures.

There's a lot of healing to be had in self study. Diamond Approach Online Glossary is a good place to do it. IMO Ill leave a couple excerpts and a link. Hope this is some help,,, Essential Development Involves Confronting Rips in the Structure of the Personality Narcissistic pathology, borderline syndrome, and the psychoses are nothing but failures and deficiencies of the structure of the personality itself, as is becoming understood now in depth psychology. The work on essential development involves actually confronting and softening this same structure. It does not only modify it but in some sense actually dismantles the ego identity and reinstitutes the lost identity, the true, high self of the essence. This is bound to bring to consciousness all the conflicts, fears, distortions and deficiencies in the structure. We are not here lauding weak or deficient structures of the personality; borderline tendencies and psychosis are not essence. They are just rips in the structure of the personality itself. Actually, the personality must be somewhat stable but flexible for the work of essential development to be possible. Otherwise, the conflicts and fears will be too quicklydisintegrating, and the person will not be able to tolerate the process. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 119 Everybody has Neurotic, Borderline, Narcissistic and Psychotic Features in His Personality However, even neurotic and normal personalities have features similar to these severe pathologies. Sometimes the difference is only in the degree of pathology. The extent of the presence of borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic features in neurotic and normal personality structures is just beginning to be acknowledged in psychological circles. It is still very far from being seen objectively. From our perspective, everybody has neurotic, borderline, narcissistic, and psychotic features in his personality, each stemming from its developmental anlage in the process of ego development. People differ in the preponderance and intensity of the different developmental features in their personalities. Diagnosis in terms of neurotic, borderline, and so on is useful only for the practical purposes of applying technique and judging what is the best sequence of development for a particular student. For instance, a normal person with borderline tendencies might need to deal to some extent with some of the features of his ego structure before it is possible or even desirable to deal effectively with his superego. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 135 https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/borderline Personally, I had to work on 'the grandiose self' and schizoid coping mechanisms https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/grandiose-self https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/schizoid-defense Good luck,,,

I can't be quiet inside if my attention is dispersed. To get into a 'collected state' means that all of my attention is collected. Also it means I need the ability to direct my attention and not let it be drawn, which is usually through emotions or that I fall into autopilot and my attention is dispersed continually and increasingly as more and more attention escapes my direction,,, i cant become free from other people or have inner quiet if my metaphorical atmosphere has a whole in it. Maurice Nicoll used the term being hermetically sealed. I would update this metaphor to being teflon coated,,, im not talking about being a stoic 'island to oneself' but really to the capacity for staying centered and being impartial. Being hermetically sealed works better with the metaphor of us each having our own atmosphere. In an Ocke de Boer article he draws from another source where Gurdjieff gives an exercise for getting into the collected state. In this, he grouches at Madame Desaltman who ended up carrying on Gurdjieffs work and living to be exactly 100,,, I think. She died in the 1980's An introduction from Ocke: Ocke: Whatever I say about this will never be enough, but I will tell you what I think about this from my own experience and you will have to make your own disparity with that. To make your own disparity with something is to reconcile something from Reason-of-knowing to Reason-of-understanding. You need the Reason of knowing to receive an idea. You need your own individuality-data to reconcile it into your own understanding. Your understanding and real I are one, according to Orage. The expression of your own individuality needs to be third force of your life. The result of work is that knowledge becomes understanding. To learn to get our two-natured system (planetary and astral bodies) accustomed to higher states, we have to learn to become collected. To get to a collected state is described in the Transcripts of Meetings by Gurdjieff from 1941-1946. This collected state is the basis for learning to remember ourselves. Gurdjieff giving the exercise for a "collected state" Gurdjieff: You must do an exercise to be more collected. Learn to collect yourself. Choose a good moment that seems propitious. Sit down let nobody disturb you. Relax yourself. All your attention - all your will is concentrated on your relaxation. You quieten your associations. After - only after, you begin to think.. Mme D: Yes. I try like that and I do not succeed. Gurdjieff: Wait. Do not disturb me - do not interrupt me. You have never done like this. Your explanations prove it to me. After, when you have quieted your associations, only then, begin the exercise - consciously, with all your attention, all your faculties. You represent to yourself that you are surrounded by an atmosphere. Like the earth, man also has an atmosphere, which surrounds him on all sides, for a metre, more or less - to a limit. In the atmosphere the associations, in ordinary life the thoughts-produce waves. It concentrates at certain places - it recedes; it has movements according to the direction which you impart it. This depends on the movement of your thought. Your atmosphere is displaced in the direction in which your thought goes. If you think of you mother, who is far away your atmosphere moves towards the place where your mother is. When you do this exercise, you represent to yourself that this atmosphere has limits. For example one metre and a half, shall we say. Then you concentrate all your attention on preventing your atmosphere from escaping beyond the limit. You do not allow it to go further than one metre or one metre and a half. When you feel your atmosphere quieted, without waves, without movement, then with all your will you suck it into yourself - you conserve yourself in this atmosphere. You draw it consciously into yourself. The more you can, the better it is. To start with, is very tiring. That is how one must do the exercise. Afterward you rest yourself - you send the exercise to the devil. Repeat it afresh in the evening. This exercise is done especially to allow one to have a collected state. It is the first exercise. It is difficult to penetrate into yourself at the first effort. One must compel the atmosphere to remain within its limits - not allow it to go further than it should. It is the first exercise in order to have a collected state. This exercise I have given to everybody. No one has understood what is collectedness, nor given it any attention”... Ocke: This exercise was given by Gurdjieff for everybody, and it is the basis for learning to remember yourself and it is also the basis for learning how to sense and fill the body, which is extremely important if we want our atmosphere to be detached from other surrounding atmospheres. This detachment will make it possible to become free inside from other people. If we want to coat the higher in us we have to become free from other people.

Culture encourages us to dissociate through materialism and ambition. Purifying myself of emotional negativity and reactiveness frees up attention and takes the Leins and mortgages off my Awareness = more freedom, inner and outer. Just being devils advocate,,,,,