Zigzag Idiot and the ladder of Objective Reason

[Zigzag Idiot]

To endeavor to persevere. To remember yourSelf in not splitting off and fragmenting your instinctual drives.

Strategy of putting the whammy of a Care-bear mindmeld on others who are causing trouble,,,

[Zigzag Idiot]

Thoughts on shift between first tier and second tier of Spiral Dynamics map of Human worldviews or levels of consciousness.

 

There seems to be an energized empathy at the green level which precedes the yellow level beginning the shift into the second level. It seems to me that people at the yellow level and above have emerged after being overwhelmed in a ‘dark night’ of sorts. They have died to parts of themselves that were constructed out of a naïve imagination which kept them in an all-knowing certainty devoid of the harsh realities that are at the basis of human survival in which a scarcity of resources mandates that a form of narcissistic competition must exist. This competition has a dominant theme which includes social acceptance through demonstrating wealth. Those who are not born into wealthy families and even those who are, are conditioned into the idea of getting a “higher education” with the promise of wisdom and success for those who make it through. 
From my perspective I see an eroding of common sense and in its place a construction of self importance based in part on the ability to confuse or intimidate others with an attitude of glib, erudite confidence. Otherwise known as the ability or capacity for successfully bullshiting others.

The building of this capacity can also overtime put one through the meat grinder of higher education. So it’s not a this or that choice. It’s the half measures on the path of struggle which leaves people in cul-de-sacs of chronic depression or an overwhelmed apathy.

Actualization is not solely for the educated. In part It’s about discovering and expressing in some way that uniqueness that is yours alone. 
Do you see a distinction between identifying with multiculturalism or relating with transcultural non attachment? One is an “ism” and the other one is not. It’s not the 3 letters of ism that cause a blind spot but rather the identifying with ————— fill in the blank. Pluralism, socialism, capitalism, monotheism, etc., I’ve digressed,,, As Gurdjieff put it- Identification is one of our worst foes.

Going back now to being overwhelmed on the path, stalling out and just barely surviving day to day or week to week. A distinction was made by Abraham Maslow between “survival or deficiency needs” and what he referred to as “being needs”.  The lower levels below 2nd tier are concerned mostly with deficiency needs; food, shelter, sex, social acceptance. He equated “being needs” with whatever you do that inspires you. It’s where a person works because of a selfish fulfillment, in a sense. Say that a someone works above and beyond what’s expected in order to finish a job. They are willing to endure tiredness and perhaps criticism from others in order to accomplish whatever it is that they are doing. That’s a path with heart as Castaneda phrased it. 

People who are confident and at peace are trustworthy. They know the difference between a neurotic state of mind juxtaposed to having inner quiet. They know that unbalanced or neurotic states of consciousness come and go with varying intensity. The same can be said of having inner quiet or as some Buddhists have defined wisdom as understanding silence.  A distinction should be realized between unconstrained imagination and constrained imagination. Unconstrained imagination may be one of our worst enemies. It runs hand in hand with self deception. Also with either fear or hope. 
Trustworthy people are disciplined people for the most part. But not always. You can also find many disciplined people who are deceptive, devious and cunning, I guess,,,

It’s almost a fad for people these days to be pointing out someone that they think are narcissistic. We are all narcissists to a degree. It just means being selfish or self absorbed to a degree that they are willing to actively step all over other people. I know someone who absolutely exhausts themselves trying to do the right thing while viewing themselves through the eyes of other people. There is little joy to be found there because the inner critic in them never lets them off the hook. Do something for others when you WANT to. There are times when you choose to help others when you really don’t want to but a sense of responsibility beyond that of self condemnation mandates that you do it. It is very important to take care of yourself and charge your own batteries. You can be of service to others more effectively when you are doing it from a place of exuberance and finding a selfish fulfillment while doing it. Helping others or doing a good job or creating something of quality or value pays an inner reward that speaks to your inner quiet.

Writing this out on my phone has taken a little time and I’m ready to step off my soapbox.

Good night.
 

[Zigzag Idiot]

Some of what I wrote in my last entry is garbage. Thats okay with me though. Making mistakes. inaccuracies, summarizing wrongly.

It does matter and it doesn't matter. Never mind. If it doesn’t matter then I don’t mind. If it’s a question about mind over matter then it’s a sometimes but not always situation. Like pouring empty into the void which to me seems opposite to all and everything. Then does that constitute a matter over mind equation which is in essence a brain juxtaposed to mind consideration. Brain being more basic to mind similar to the analogy of what the body is to the Soul. What about the nucleus of an atom to the circling electrons? Seems like that is similar but much lower of an octave comparatively to a central star in a solar system that has orbiting planets. Theorizing that God is a collection of galactic clusters,,,,then perhaps a human being’s lifetime is a quark in the body of God,

I'm pondering my unacknowledged fear of death as well.

The death of the body is pretty much unescapable. for all of us. Although there are some glimmers of hope in the sciences with age reversal. There are so many advances nowadays in connection with A.I.

Fell asleep last night editing on my phone. Got carried away with all that gibberish,,,, It’s cathartic somehow.

Edited February 14 by Zigzag Idiot

[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 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 Thursday at 05:59 AM 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]

In short story form. This is a community service announcement for those interested in health and hygiene during the warm season.

Big eyed Bob and Bill Buzby were just two ordinary houseflies. They lived their entire life in the suburbs of Oshkosh  Oh-my-Gosh Wisconsin. One day they were flying in and out of the open cookie jar just having a big time. Flying in and landing for a moment or two. Then to suddenly leap back out of the cookie jar into the open atmosphere of the kitchen. Big-eyed Bob shouted “Hey brother Bill Buzby. Let’s us go fly off to the bathroom and see if we can go for a log ride in the porcelain pot”  Bill Buzby replied “That’ll be great fun.” There’s been huge a turd floatin around in there all morning.” It’s just waitin there for us to make a hard landing and see if it bobbles any. It’s fun to makes waves! You betcha answered Big eyed Bob. After we walk up and down that wonderful floating vessel. We can hop on a toothbrush for a bit and then do a cakewalk that’s been waiting in the dining room for us. Lets start our pattern like that.