Zigzag Idiot

Good Harmonies They sang best when they were Younger. Just looked on google, LarryGatlin is 72. I guess they’re considered country music.

This concept/practice/phenomena as given by Maurice Nicoll has been a big help to me. In a way, it involves arriving at Self compassion from an unexpected viewpoint. EXTERNAL CONSIDERING “External considering is thinking of others. It is one of the few things in the Work that we are actually told to do...If you have taken an album of good photographs of yourself through long self-observation, then you will not have to look far in it to find in yourself what you object to so much in the other person and then you will be able to put yourself in the other person’s position...Remember that when you find the same thing in yourself that you are blaming in someone else it has the magical effect of cancelling the whole situation out. This is real ‘forgiving.’ ” V. 1, p. 259

More 80's music,,,,

I quit a 15 year, 2 pack a day habit. This was right at 20 years ago. At the time I also quit coffee during the first month but made the mistake of going back to habitually drinking coffee again, At the time I had heard that processed sugar spiked the blood sugar similar to the way cigarettes do. So sugar intake can create a stronger urge to smoke. Don't know how true that is but I made it a point to refuse as much sugar as possible the first few weeks. After a time though, I backslid on that one. The first month was hell, At six months I still craved at times. At around a year though, the cravings were completely gone. I could even enjoy a whiff of others cigs and still not crave one. I've heard ex_smokers are often the most radical about others second hand smoke. I feel fortunate to not have fallen into that. My point is that you can look forward to a time when you won't crave a cigarette anymore. I chewed a lot of sugarless gum and especially during the first 2 -3 weeks practiced the three minute rule when a cigarette craving came on strong. That meant the farthest I looked to the future was just three minutes. That helped a lot. Hanging in there maybe for even just one minute at a time I think it was probably one of the most effective practices that I used in successfully quitting the habit. Good luck!.

What's being described here to me sounds like the phenomena of being identified. It's something we all do and do it everyday to some extent. Much of it already in place from our childhood conditioning, education and cultural expectations. In the Fourth Way there are different divisions between the authentic and inauthentic depending on lineage. Most of the differences are just "in the semantics" as is said and confusion from others talking past one another because their usage of the their common words slightly differ. Some say division between authentic and inauthentic is simply between personality (being false) and synonymous with egoic and essence being what's real about individuals. Some schools add more distinction and make the divide between personality and false personality. When the false personality is seen and worked through and shadows integrated, the True Self or Pearl beyond Price is attained in which our expressions are from aspects of Essence. This doesn't happen overnight and usually requires years of work and Inquiry. Essence almost synonymous with being and presence but rather as aspects, flavors, finer distinctions of Being. Anytime I catch myself hooked, trigggered, reactive, it usually means I'm in a state of identification and usually while being in that state, do not want to admit it. But as the saying goes, it's better to eat crow while it's fresh,,, if possible.

Their both anthropormorhizing God it seems. The interviewer seems to be a Devils advocate, enneatype 6 in the first tier of Spiral Dynamics practicing Jesusism, being a little argumentative.The kid being interviewed is looking at everything in a more abstract way. Seems they were talking past each other, in the beginning at least. In Alchemy, water represents feeling. To me Living waters represents truth or purified heart. There are other takes on what water represents. In a following YouTube, the interviewer seems even more stage blue, very dualistic with fundamentalists frames of reference. Just my 2 cents. I would be interested in hearing others views.

That's great! @Raptorsin7 Better sounding news sure,,, Sounds like more experiences of Being and presence while letting go of thinking mind and narrative consciousness, perhaps? Anyway, Glad to hear your good news,,,

From Shame Faced to Self-Esteem by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2020 Dr. Jim Rosen Perhaps you feel ashamed of yourself … ashamed of your behavior … ashamed of the way you look … ashamed of your past. And you may think that you’re defective and inadequate somehow. Maybe you think there is something deeply wrong with you that makes you different from other people. Worst of all, you might think your problems cannot be fixed. Wrong! Totally wrong! The shame and the dirt are not etched in stone. Your behavior, whatever it is or has been, is not who you are inside. Your behavior is a reflection of what you believe you are. Your behavior, past and present, reflects your sense of self-esteem. “There is overwhelming evidence that the [lower] the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will treat others with [disrespect, unkindness and selfishness]. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.” (Nathaniel Branden) Without question, you have the capacity to raise your self-esteem and learn to love yourself and others - deeper and better than ever before. If you are willing to raise your self-esteem, it is a choice that you can make, a choice that is available to you. When you make this choice, your behavior reflects your new purpose. You evaluate your behavior by asking the question, "does this help to raise my love of self and others?"

In Gurdjieff's Opum Magnus- All and Everything he describes something that is fairly similar to the Akashic records. What he calls the second great ‘Transapalnianperturbation which wipes out Atlantis corresponds to what Graham Hankock has been reffering to in the last few years as the Younger Dryas event. If anyone's interested,,,, 23 The Fourth Personal Sojourn of Beelzebub on the Planet Earth 23.293 “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. 23.293 “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.’ 23.293 “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.’ 23.293-4 “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. from: https://ae.gurdjieff.org.gr/terms/en50/0392.htm

A gillion different people have sung this song but I think Perry Como's version is the best of the men. Roberta Flack's version of the Women. I get tickled watching Dusty Hill's backwards and forwards nonchalant shuffle in this video.

There are at least 3 versions of the following saying that came from Gurdjieff. "Happy is he who has a soul; happy is he who has no soul, and woe and shit for those who are in between." Purifying the emotional center doesn't happen overnight,,,, I'm still not done with mine. An old poem called "Rafais Dervish Song"- The greatest thing, you will ever know Is to remember yourself wherever you go For when you do not identify You will never cease to be. But when you do identify You will become a thing and lose your I.

As a rogue student of the Diamond Approach, I was learning about what Almaas called the Diamond Guidance from reading his books and doing Inquiry on my own without a group. It's a capacity that one develops in doing Inquiry. This is my paraphrasing. Having read his book Spacecrusier Inquiry for about the third time, he made a statement that I had missed before and you could have knocked me over with a feather. More or less he said, oh yeah, this, what I've been calling the Diamond Guidance is just another name for the Angel of Revelation or the Holy Spirit. This was around the time I began experiencing the phenomena of a slight throb or pressure in the forehead. It's the sixth chakra or third eye starting to blink open,,, No extraordinary revelation of rapture or thunderbolts or anything like that but just increased intuitiveness. A very subtle capacity. Actually my first real Inner seeing wasn't pleasant at all and didn't occur until 8 years after this. About 3 years ago. It was horrifying and I'm glad I wasn't shown this ,,, revelation until then. I wouldn't have been able to handle it earlier in life.. Diamond Guidance Discriminates the Immediacy of What We are Experiencing This brings us back to the discerning and knowing capacity of presence itself—the higher intellect, essential nous, or what we call “diamond guidance”—which reveals that freedom has other meanings and other horizons. The thing that we need to understand about this discerning capacity is that it discriminates not only our knowledge and the content of our mind but also our direct experience. It discriminates the immediacy of what we are experiencing by discerning, seeing, and revealing what is there. It can extract the meaning and the implications of the experience, which in any experience of true nature are countless and varied. When I say “higher intellect” or “divine mind,” many people misunderstand and consider these to be mental faculties. But the heart is vital to this kind of creative discrimination. The functioning of this capacity actually happens through the unity of mind and heart because without love, there would be no compassion or sensitivity to the mind’s discernment. The creative discrimination of presence is activated by the participation of the heart. This discrimination arises according to true, deep, existential need and only when we have the right orientation—a loving desire to know the truth. Runaway Realization, pg. 232 from-https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/diamond-guidance many other excerpts to be found here also

More interesting quotes I just thought of further on in the text- You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let (in to) banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. The voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not attack. It merely REMINDS. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you OF. It brings to your mind the OTHER way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The voice for God is always quiet, because it speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war, because it heals. War is DIVISION, not increase. No-one gains from strife. Actually this is from the Urtext- http://a.courseinmiracles.com/urtext/chapter-5/section_4.php#gsc.tab=0 And more- How willing are you to forgive your brother? How much do you desire peace, instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form. Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This is the "sacrifice" salvation asks, and gladly offers peace INSTEAD of this. - http://a.courseinmiracles.com/urtext/chapter-29/section_7.php#gsc.tab=0 And this- The miracle forgives; the ego damns. Neither need be defined except by this. Yet could a definition be more sure, or more in line with what salvation is? Problem and answer lie together here, and having met at last the choice is clear. Who chooses hell when it is recognized? And who would not go on a little while when it is given him to understand the way is short and Heaven is his goal?

The Teacher who led me through ACIM in 2015 had by that time already been through the Course 3 or 4 maybe 5 times. He stressed the importance of The Lessons of the Holy Spirit in Chapter 6 when we got to that point. A. To Have, Give All to All B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom Some of the text here: C. Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom T-6.V.C.1. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and must be. 2 He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. 3 Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. 4 What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purifies. 5 But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. 6 This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. 7 Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. 8 This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. 9 The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. 10 The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. 11 He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous. T-6.V.C.2. The Holy Spirit does not teach you to judge others, because He does not want you to teach error and learn it yourself. 2 He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. 3 In the mind of the thinker, then, He is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. 4 This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment. 5 The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. 6 God Himself has established what you can extend with perfect safety. 7 Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is: 8 Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. T-6.V.C.3. This is a major step toward fundamental change. 2 Yet it still has an aspect of thought reversal, since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant against. 3 It has advanced far from the first lesson, which is merely the beginning of the thought reversal, and also from the second, which is essentially the identification of what is more desirable. 4 This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first, emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. 5 It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable. T-6.V.C.4. While the first step seems to increase conflict and the second may still entail conflict to some extent, this step calls for consistent vigilance against it. 2 I have already told you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. 3 This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you must be. 4 It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. 5 This lesson is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur. 6 Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. 7 Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long, since they are mutually exclusive. 8 As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness, and still believe that you can choose either one. 9 By teaching what to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately teach you that you need not choose at all. 10 This will finally liberate your mind from choice, and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom. T-6.V.C.5. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you to the Kingdom. 2 You create by your true being, but what you are you must learn to remember. 3 The way to remember it is inherent in the third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the others, and goes beyond them towards real integration. 4 If you allow yourself to have in your mind only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it. 5 Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. 6 Since it is whole, you are teaching peace because you believe in it. 7 The final step will still be taken for you by God, but by the third step the Holy Spirit has prepared you for God. 8 He is getting you ready for the translation of having into being by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him. I get new insights each time I read and reread the text. For those who are curious about more of the text I'll leave this link. https://acourseinmiraclesnow.com/course-miracles-chapter-6-v-lessons-holy-spirit/

I gathered some excerpts on Awareness that I like from the Ridhwan Glossary. The Ego Responds to Anxiety by Cutting off Awareness As awareness expands, the person becomes aware first of the necessity to find ways of dealing with his superego. This is the first important task. Without this ability, the individual will find it extremely difficult to expand his awareness and deal with his unconscious. The reason is that the status quo of the personality is maintained by the superego. In particular, the status quo is continued by keeping the unconscious unconscious, by enforcing the defensive mechanisms of the ego. The agent that enforces these defensive functions is the superego. We need to understand the process of repression in order to understand this mechanism more fully: awareness of unconscious material causes anxiety to the ego. The ego responds to anxiety with repression; it cuts off awareness from the arising unconscious material. In this way it avoids experiencing the anxiety and thus avoids the disintegrating effect of the anxiety on the ego structure. Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment, pg. 136 What Awareness Means Being aware means immediacy. It means that the tentacles of my soul are wrapping themselves around the feeling, penetrating it and all its parts, feeling it from inside and outside—because my awareness extends everywhere. If I am not fully aware of the situation, how am I going to find out the truth about it? And if I am not interested in paying attention to what is happening now, what does it mean when I say that I love being myself? When you love somebody, you want to find out everything about them, don’t you? When you love something, what do you want to do with it? You want to know it. Love always translates into awareness, into knowing. If you love somebody, you want to see them, you want to know them, you want to be as completely familiar with them as possible. If you are really interested in being yourself, that interest begins with the awareness of where you are at this very moment. Being who you are can only arise from the love of being where you are. The Unfolding Now, pg. 14 Pure Awareness is Specifically Transcendence of the Concept of Being Since pure awareness is beyond knowing, the experience is totally nonconceptual. There is awareness of awareness, which is the presence of awareness, but this presence is not felt as presence. Nonconceptual awareness is beyond the concept of being, so we cannot experience or describe it as being or presence. We might then think that it must be nonbeing, but nonbeing is also a concept, the opposite of being. Being and nonbeing constitute a pair of mutually defining concepts; like all conceptual pairs, neither exists without the other. Experientially, being is presence and nonbeing is absence; the latter is often referred to as emptiness. Because pure awareness is free from the cognitive element, it transcends all concepts, but it is specifically the transcendence of the concept of being. By transcending being it also transcends nonbeing, emptiness. Experientially we feel it as simultaneous presence and absence, being and nonbeing. But this is only when we begin to view it conceptually. When the experience is full and complete we cannot say it is both presence and absence, nor neither. In fact, it does not occur to us to say anything about it, for to speak is to conceptualize, while here we are absolutely in the moment, beyond all mind and speaking. The Inner Journey Home, pg. 327 This last excerpt reminds me of a quote Ocke de Boer uses to start off chapter 16 in his book Higher Being Bodies. The reference His gives for it is Wei - Wu- Wei, All Else is Bondage: Non-volitional Living (Fairfield Iowa; Sunstar publishing, 2002), page 53. I am the absence of my presence and I am the absence of the presence of my absence In searching for this last quote I discovered Ocke's website Higher Being Bodies is no longer up. The main feature of which was his article/interview A dialogue with Ocke was was extremely rich. Bummer, I hope it gets put back up,,,, Ocke has many interesting ideas he conveys such as: The chakras are the sense organs of the Kedsjan (Astral) body. I don't take ideas such as this as a belief but I hold them in the category of 'as if' and ponder them at times.

I printed this off back in 2007. Although it is wrinkled from being shuffled around over the years, I'm glad I did because I can no longer find it on the School of Wisdom website. It is about what the center of The Wheel represents - Awareness. I don't know if Arnold Keyserling penned it or R.C.L. who was a student of his and has remained a friend. Arnold passed away in 2005. He was a friend and student of Gurdjieff's during his Paris days after WW2.

Hexagram 15; Modesty - is one of my favorite hexagrams in ICHING The Oracle of the Cosmic Way. I guess the fact that I rarely get it may be saying something in itself. I did get it this morning though in my second hexagram. My first was hexagram 52; Mediating- with just one changing line. This is not all of the general commentary on hexagram 15-Modesty. There are still 2 more pages that I won't include but if you've read this far you've gotten a sample of some of this books treasures. The three virtues- Modesty Equality Uniqueness = Love

Jana Dixon describing an episode during a phrase of her Kundalini rising (awakening) that I found humorous. She then goes on to quote Dave Chapelle. How can you not like that? "A funny thing happened during a massive 4 day ecstasy period around the full moon in January 2007 (when the earth was closest to the sun). I was in a hardware store floating around in ecstasy looking for things and an Australian sheep dog barked at me. I made a joke that it was because the dog is Australian and I am a New Zealander, but really I knew he was barking at the ecstasy energy, which vicariously inflates the heart fields of lifeforms within its reach. The owner eyed me suspiciously however...perhaps I could have told the owner that the dog was barking due to my radically magnified heart field...but that would be just too much information for a non-initiate (trancer). While there is some volition and cooperation needed, mostly as “surrender to Grace,” it is the "alchemy" itself that does all the "work." Altho people have been trying for centuries, you cannot really force the heart to open, it opens of its own accord in its own time, and in its own pace...and it doesn't have a lot to do with our will, volition or ego control. When the cerebrospinal fluid is adequately ionized, and the amrita substances filter into the blood+lymph that goes to the right side of the heart…then the heart goes solar and circuitry in the brain is transformed at a faster rate...the whole body is transfigured within the magnified heart field. The ecstatic heart is obviously palpable to the person who owns it, and also at an unconscious level by those who come within the heart’s field. I think eventually scientists are probably going to call this energy scalar energy, if the research done at Heartmath institute is any indication. After coming down from a period of ecstasy you might feel a withdrawal-like hangover. Comprising of a sense of disorientation, clouding and sense of loss in the brainstem area. Baths, walking, stretching, rebounding, breathing, drinking water, toning and meditating with the mindseye on the brainstem will help metabolize the down-cycle." http://www.appliedmeditation.org/The_Heart/articles_joseph_chilton_pearce.shtml “Wisdom arises when the vibratory capacity of an individual, or a group, increases to a point of direct apprehension of the underlying pattern, or unity of phenomenon is possible. This capacity is modulated through a sequence of subtler planes of experience and seems to best be achieved when the heart opens. We see with this kind of opening that the root of wisdom is to be found in what we truly care about.” David La Chapelle http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/files_people/LaChapelle_David.htm "The hardest thing to actually handle is the "pleasure" of our own emergence." - Jana Dixon Taken from this page of her e-book- http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php@story=HeartExpansions.html

A Man Should Too by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2020 Dr. Jim Rosen “A woman should be able to be both independent and dependent, active and passive, relaxed and serious, practical and romantic, tender and tough minded, thinking and feeling, dominant and submissive. So, obviously, should a man!” (Pierre Mornell) To try to be just one or the other (e.g. only dominant or only submissive), is to ignore your real humanness. Look at the lessons that God tries to teach us when we experience a hardship, for instance, and life demands that we be flexible and bend. It is in the letting go of the rigid ways, when you walk away from the extreme and allow yourself to experience the other side of life, that life becomes more stable and balanced.