Zigzag Idiot and the ladder of Objective Reason

[Zigzag Idiot]

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

Been more than once in my life that I was crying and eating. People were looking at me like something was wrong. Well, there was something wrong. I was grieving but at the same time it coincided with an appetite with hunger pangs. I intuited that people were judging me for shoveling down food right after had received very distressing information. There I was trying to chew and swallow a mouthful of food and cry at the same time. Where is it written down that if you're extremely worried and/or grieving that it's somehow improper to ingest some cooked food?  And so-what if you're crying also. It's normal for human beings to cry! People are so quick to judge sometimes,,,

[Zigzag Idiot]

Two Alejandro Jodorowski movies

• El Topo
• Holy Mountain

 

 

They are very weird. I think it wa El Topo that John Lennon financed a theater in New York City to have it run as a midnight movie for quite a while.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

         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.

[Zigzag Idiot]

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.

[Zigzag Idiot]

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.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

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."

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

                                                                                                      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/

Edited April 1, 2024 by Zigzag Idiot
added link to article

[Zigzag Idiot]

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

 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

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. 

[Zigzag Idiot]

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.

Edited April 25, 2024 by Zigzag Idiot
Added YouTube short

[Zigzag Idiot]

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.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

            “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
 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

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.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

Did Jesus Christ ,,,,

Does Jesus Christ want people to worship him?

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

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.

 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

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,,,

 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

Don’t ya love these,,,,?

[Zigzag Idiot]

Synchronicity = an accident that is waiting to happen. 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

One of Our Deepest Attachments is to Our Self-Image

How does attachment manifest throughout our lives? It manifests in all areas, in all corners, at all levels, in all its gradations. One of our deepest attachments is to our self-image, both how we see ourselves and how others see us. Our self-image is who we think we are, how we want to be, what we want to have in our life—whether it’s a house that looks a certain way, a certain lover or mate who fills certain criteria. “I’m a good person and deserve this,” or “I’m a bad person.” The self-image we are attached to is often negative. Everyone has some negative self-image. If you’re attached to being good, then you’re always finding proof that you’re a good person. You might be attached to a self-image of being good, strong, powerful, rich, beautiful, popular, being married, single, etc. This is the most superficial layer; and it’s where most people live. The most common level of consciousness is focused on this superficial image level.

Diamond Heart Book II, pg. 51

 

Source of Self-image can be Revealed by Essence 

This is where Essence is valuable; it will give you the knowledge and understanding that no one else can. If you deeply investigate the issue of self-image, you'll come to the essential aspect that corresponds to self-image. When this happens, you will experience Essence in a way that has no self-image; instead there will be space, openness, inner spaciousness. This is the essential aspect that was lost when you developed the self-image and believed that the self-image was who you truly are. The self-image always has a boundary -- physical, emotional or conceptual. When you experience space, you experience yourself as being without boundaries, without definition, just openness. 

Diamond Heart Book II, pg. 36