Reclusland

The internet is a self-referential web of concepts.  It creates an echo chamber within which realities false and true arise and pass away at greater and greater speeds.  Samsara on rocket fuel…  This can lead to an eventual “punch in the gut” from “objective reality”.  And those who are able to say “Ok, yes, and this too” are able to take advantage of this and begin once again to separate the chaff from the wheat.  Those who withdraw and refuse to admit the pain of the punch encase themselves even deeper into the echo chamber and are lost in, and eventually destroyed by, the cacophony. Conservatives stare into the abyss.

Remember the abyss?

“It is perhaps worth adding, as a footnote, a slightly different angle on the same difficulty.  The arbitrariness of the existing verbal concepts is not their only disadvantage, for once they are invented, verbal concepts have a further ill-effect on us.  We lose the ability to modify them.  In the unselfconscious situation the action of culture on form is a very subtle business, made up of many minute concrete influences.  But once these influences are represented symbolically in verbal terms, and these symbolic representations or names subsumed under larger and still more abstract categories to make them amenable to thought, they begin to seriously impede our ability to see beyond them.
Where a number of issues are being taken into account in a design decision, inevitably the ones which can be most clearly expressed carry the greatest weight, and are best reflected in the form.  Other factors, important too but less well expressed, are not well reflected.  Caught in a net of language of our own invention, we overestimate the language’s impartiality.  Each concept, at the time of its invention no more than a concise way of grasping many issues, quickly becomes a precept.  We take the step from description to criterion too easily, so that what is at first a useful tool becomes a bigoted preoccupation.
The Roman bias toward functionalism and engineering did not reach its peak until after Vitruvius had formulates the functionalist doctrine.  The Parthenon could only have been created during a time of preoccupation with aesthetic problems, after the earlier Greek invention of the concept of ‘beauty.’  England’s nineteenth century low-cost slums were conceived only after monetary values had explicitly been given great importance through the concept ‘economics,’ invented not long before.
In this fashion the selfconscious individual’s grasp of problems is consistently misled.  His concepts and categories, besides being arbitrary and unsuitable, are self-perpetuating.  Under the influence of concepts, he not only does things from a biased point of view, but sees them biasedly as well  The concepts control his perception of fit and misfit – until in the end he sees nothing but deviations from his conceptual dogmas, and loses not only the urge but even the mental opportunity to frame his problems more appropriately.”  – Christopher Alxander, “Notes on the Synthesis of Form”

Quick-and-dirty is a term used in reference to anything that is an easy way to implement a workaround or “kludge”. Its usage is popular among programmers, who use it to describe a crude solution or programming implementation that is imperfect but which solves or masks the problem at hand, and is generally faster and easier to put in place than a proper solution. It is also used in cognitive science to describe first-pass cognitive processes that might attempt to quickly process information in a simple way before resorting to more heavy resource-consuming processes. Recognizing the attractiveness of implementing changes speedily, there was a general move to formalize this as rapid application development. Quick-and-dirty solutions often attend to a specific instance of a problem rather than fixing the cause of the more general problem. As such, they are sometimes used to keep an item of software or hardware working temporarily until a proper fix can be made.

No word uttered by a god could be less than the universe, or briefer than the sum of time. – Borges

(And this experience is God’s Speech, God’s participals and diphthongs, God’s verbs, God’s meter and rhyme scheme, God’s conjugation.  And we are the part this Speech which exists to experience this Speech and to speak back to the Speaker while still being part of what is Spoken. Yet we seem only to want to speak of our own role, never turning to speak of the whole flow of Expression, of which we are both a part and all.  Thus, we keep our light under a bushel basket, and cover ourselves over to hide within the garden, so God does not See us.  And even though the Speech that God Sees is made Good in the Seeing, still we hide with our roles…)

So let start helping God make that proper fix by getting our heads out from behind our fig leaf bushel baskets…  How many times is God going let God’self get punched in the gut because we are not saying “OK, yes, and this too” for God, as the Speech of God, as that which is the Speech and knows the Speech?

Ultimately, I have divided the world – although these divisions are arbitrary – into beings and paper dolls.  The word “paper doll,” which has stuck to my tongue, helps me to distinguish all the mental constructs.  There are, of course, useful paper dolls and useless paper dolls.  And the usefulness of either varies according to the passage of time or a change in our particular circumstances.  At a certain moment, a formerly useless paper doll can be come useful.

The root of the virtual is the real.  Because of this, the virtual world will always dissolve into the real.

“Whether we like it or not, however rational we should like it to be, there is a factor of judgement in the choice and use of a logical system which we cannot avoid.  Logical pictures, like any others, are made by simplifications and selections.  It is up to us to see which simplifications we wish to make, which aspects to consider significant, which picture to adopt.  And this decision is logically arbitrary.  However reasonable and sound the picture is internally, the choice of a picture must, in the end, be irrational.  For even if we can give reasons for choosing one logical scheme rather than another, these reasons only imply that there is another decision scheme behind the first (very likely not explicit).   Perhaps there is still another behind the second one.  But somewhere there are decisions made that are not rational in any sense, that are subject to nothing more than the personal bias of the decision maker.  Logical methods, at best, rearrange the way in which personal bias is to be introduced into a problem.  Of course, this “at best” is rather important.  Present intuitive methods unhappily introduce personal bias in such a way that it makes problems impossible to solve correctly.  Our purpose must be to repattern the bias so that it no longer interferes in this destructive way with the process of design, and no longer inhibits clarity of form.”  – Christopher Alexander, “Notes on the Synthesis of Form”

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What comes to mind for me:

Rational form ultimately springs from the non-rational root of personal choice.  Sadly this is almost always done unconsciously, buried under too many previous layers of so-called impersonal rationality.  The fruit of this unconsciousness is to insist in the complete rationality of our forms and systems, an insistence which sits un-well with 0ur intuition.  Our intuition can feel the irrationality beneath the rational, but our adherence to the rational will not allow us to admit the truth of our intuition’s judgement.  The proper choice here would be to work to consciously admit the irrational at the root of all rational systems, while not abandoning the use of rational systems in general.  But, because we rarely choose to dig that deeply into our rational systems, and because we are scared of completely losing them, the intuition is denied its validation, and instead is reactionarily whored out as “”anti-rational,” a foe of rationality, rather than what lies behind all rational systems.  This weakens the truth at the heart of the intuition and makes it unreliable.

Since we refuse to admit the irrational at the root of the rational, even while our intuition tells us that it is ultimately irrational, we therefore must block out part of the intuitive, while still needing to rely on this crippled intuition whenever our rational systems fails us.  What is needed instead is an admittance, a confession, that the so-called rational is ultimately based on the irrational, and therefore the rational must be allowed to die away and grow back as the irrational reality of the situation demands.  The irrational is our source and our true identity.  The rational is a growth, an addition, a beard or makeup upon the original face of the irrational.  It can be used to make the irrational beautiful, but it must never be allowed to be mistaken as ultimate.  Only the irrational is ever truly ultimate.

This paints a picture of endless death and rebirth.  Whether this is a complete picture of the true state of things remains to be seen…

(note, all emphasis is mine)

“The fully conscious and alive individual is totally present in the moment and perceives each situation as it is, free from all prejudice and all bias. His perceptions and his actions are not hampered by emotional or mental preconceptions and are not conditioned by past experience. Therefore, his perception is accurate and his action is to the point; accordingly, he has the capacity to respond efficiently, in tune with the needs of each situation he encounters. This, of course, implies a certain kind of freedom, which such an individual experiences within his body as a lack of barriers to the movement of energy. His emotions flow unhindered and are appropriate responses to the situations he encounters. This quantitative change from man’s normal mode results in a qualitative change in the content of such a person’s inner experience, which cannot be accessed by an ordinary person, even in his imagination.

Although this state is not conceived of by the majority of humanity, it is still a potential for each human being. There is proof enough of its reality in the few individuals of the various spiritual traditions who have realized it. That it is difficult to attain does not negate its possibility. All disciplines truly oriented toward freeing man attempt to realize it. The desire for growth and expansion is, among other things, a direct consequence of the experience of the absence of this condition of freedom, indicating that something necessary—and therefore attainable—is missing.

With this ideal condition as a background, the process of growth and unfoldment becomes easier to understand and appreciate: any deviation from this condition indicates the presence of prejudices based on the past, whether obvious or hidden, and growth is a matter of uncovering these prejudices and moving beyond them.”

- A.H. Almaas

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“When we speak of bad fit we refer to a single identifiable property of an ensemble, which is immediate in experience, and describable.  Wherever an instance of misfit occurs in an ensemble, we are able to point specifically at what fails and to describe it.  It seems as though in practice the concept of good fit, describing only the absence of such failures and hence leaving us nothing concrete to refer to in explanation, can only be explained indirectly; it is, in practice, as it were, the disjunction of all possible misfits.

With this in mind, I should like to recommend that we should always expect to see the process of achieving a good fit between two entities as a negative process of neutralizing the incongruities, or irritants, or forces, which cause misfits.

It will be objected that to call a good fit the absence of certain negative qualities is no more illuminating than to say that it is the presence of certain positive qualities.  However, though the two are equivalent from a logical point of view, from a phenomenological and practical point of view they are very different.  In practice it will never be as natural to speak of good fit as the simultaneous satisfaction of a number of requirements, as it will be to call it simultaneous nonoccurrence of the same number of corresponding misfits.”

“But if we think of the requirements from a negative point of view, as potential misfits, there is a simple way of picking a finite set.  This is because it is though misfit that the problem originally brings itself to our attention.  We take just those relationships between form and context (Ian’s note: “form” meaning “figure”, and “context” meaning “ground”) which obtrude most strongly, which demand attention most clearly, which seem most likely to go wrong.  We cannot do better than this.  If there were some intrinsic way of reducing the list of requirements to a few, this would mean in essence that we were in possession of a field description of the context: if this were so, the problem of creating fit would become trivial, and no longer a problem of design.  We cannot have a unitary or field description of a context and still have a design problem worth attention. ”

- Christopher Alexander

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Having taken a seat to one side, Vacchagotta the wanderer said to the Master, ‘Now then, Venerable Gotama, is there a self?’ When this was said, the Master was silent.

‘Then is there no self?’ For a second time the Master was silent.

Then Vacchagotta the wanderer got up from his seat and left.

Then, not long after Vacchagotta the wanderer had left, the Venerable Ananda said to the Master, ‘Why, sir, did the Master not answer when asked a question asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer?’

‘Ananda, if I, being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self, were to answer that there is a self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of eternalism (i.e., the view that there is an eternal soul). And if I… were to answer that there is no self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of annihilationism (i.e., that death is the annihilation of experience). If I… were to answer that there is a self, would that be in keeping with the arising of knowledge that all phenomena are not-self?

‘No, Lord.’

‘And if I… were to answer that there is no self, the bewildered Vacchagotta would become even more bewildered: “Does the self which I used to have, now not exist?”‘

— S XLIV.10

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Everything, without exception, all sound logic as well as all historical data, reveal and affirm that God represents absolute goodness; He is all-loving and all-forgiving. He is the just pacifier of all that exists.

At the same time why should He, being as He is, send away from Himself one of His nearest, by Him animated, beloved sons, only for the “way of pride” proper to any young and still incompletely formed individual, and bestow upon him a force equal but opposite to His own? . . . I refer to the “Devil.”

This idea illuminated the condition of my inner world like the sun, and rendered it obvious that in the great world for the possibility of harmonious construction there was inevitably required some kind of continuous perpetuation of the reminding factor.

For this reason our Maker Himself, in the name of all that He had created, was compelled to place one of His beloved sons in such an, in the objective sense, invidious situation.

Therefore I also have now for my small inner world to create out of myself, from some factor beloved by me, an alike unending source.

- Gurdjieff (PDF)

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¹¹ Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

¹³ “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴ After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶ He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

¹⁷ “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸ I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ ²⁰ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

²¹ “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

²² “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴ For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Luke 15:11-32

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Eckhart Tolle – Did the universe make a mistake with the ego?

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Dukkha – Etymology

The early Western translators of Buddhist texts (prior to the 1970s) translated the Pali term dukkha as “suffering” and conveyed the impression that Buddhism was a pessimistic or world-denying philosophy. Later translators, however, including Walpola Rahula (What Buddha Taught, 1974) and nearly all contemporary translators, have emphasized that “suffering” is too limited a translation for the term dukkha, and have preferred to either leave the term untranslated or to clarify that translation with terms such as unease, anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction, disquietude, etc.

Rupert Gethin explains:

Rich in meaning and nuance, the word duḥkha is one of the basic terms of Buddhist and other Indian religious discourse. Literally ‘pain’ or ‘anguish’, in its religious and philosophical contexts duḥkha is, however, suggestive of an underlying sense of ‘unsatisfactoriness’ or ‘unease’ that must ultimately mar even our experience of happiness.

On the deepest level, dukkha suggests a basic unsatisfactoriness pervading all forms of life because all forms of life are impermanent and constantly changing. Dukkha indicates a lack of satisfaction, a sense that things never measure up to our expectations or standards.

Sargeant (2009: p. 303) explains the historical roots of duḥkha and its antonym sukha:

It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning “sky,” “ether,” or “space,” was originally the word for “hole,” particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan’s vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, “having a good axle hole,” while duhkha meant “having a poor axle hole,” leading to discomfort.

According to grammatical tradition, dukkha is derived from dus-kha “uneasy”, but according to Monier-Williams more likely a Prakritized form of dus-stha “unsteady, disquieted”. The Sanskrit prefix ‘su’ is used as an emphasis suggesting wholesome, high, evolved, desirable, strong and such.

Cheat sheet:

The main points here:

1) Suffering is caused by a bad fit between “self” and “context”.  The best way to achieve good fit is to find a bad fit and negate it.  The negation of a bad fit requires attention.

2) Growth is possible, required, preferable to no growth, and necessary for harmonious construction.  Such growth requires constant attention, and constant attention requires a constant reminding factor.

3) In an ever-changing world, good fit is indistinguishable from growth.  A good metaphor for this is a smooth axle wheel making for a good ride.

4) No attention = bad fit = bad ride.  When attention gets stuck on anything, it is a bad fit.

“Life is exactly that property of space in which each spot becomes unique according to its place in the larger scheme of things.

So, if there were a spatial formula which would explain in detail how to make living space, it would fail, because, by virtue of being a formula, it could not succeed in treating each place as unique.

But there is a formula of living process. If you pay attention to the wholeness, intensify it, intensify it some more – gradually then it becomes unique.”

Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s Palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband’s chamber, hath too such causes of delight as you.

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.

Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table: till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made: till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house: Till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it : and more rejoice in the palace of your glory, than if it had been made but to-day morning.

Yet further, you never enjoy the world aright; till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it, that you had rather suffer the flames of Hell than willingly be guilty of their error. There is so much blindness and ingratitude and damned folly in it. The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said “God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and the Gate of Heaven”.

“My soul… Where are you?..
Do you hear me?..
I Speak.. I call you.. Are you there?
I have Returned.
I am here again.

I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet,
and I have come to you.
I am with you..
After long years, of long wondering,
I have come to you, again.Should I tell you, everything I have seen?
Experienced? or drank in?
or do you not want to hear,
about the noise of life and the world.But one thing you must know,
the one thing I have learned,
is that one must live his life..
This life is the way,
the long sought after way,
to the unfathomable which we call divine.

There is no other way.
All other ways, are false paths.
So I found the right way,
to let it let me to you, to my soul.

I’ve returned, tempted and purified.
Do you still know me?
How long, the separation lasted.
Everything has come so different.

And how did I find you?
How strange my journey was.
What words should I use to tell you,
on what twisted path a good star has guided me to you.

Give me your hand,
My almost forgotten soul.
How long, the joy, at seeing you again.
You long disappointed soul.
Life has let me back to you.
Let us thank the life I have lived,
for all the happy, and all the sad hours,
For every joy, for every sadness.

My soul, my journey,
should continue with you..
I will wonder with you,
and ascend to my solitude..”

~ Carl G. Jung

“When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” -Byron Katie

This has long been a favorite BK quote of mine. What it points to, a bit humorously, is the cold-blooded, unflinchingly consistent, non-negotiable fact that REALITY trumps “your thoughts ABOUT reality” every single time.

In a moment of insight, she saw the inherent beauty in how consistent and impersonal this “law of the universe” is: “Oh, I see… when I believe my thoughts, I suffer. When I don’t, I don’t suffer.”

It’s not about trying to change your thoughts or get rid of them. Rather, it is simply no longer believing/taking seriously/buying whatever story or scenario the thought is trying to “sell” you on.

-Michael Jeffreys

and yet…

I was listening to an interview with Byron Katie today during my run and she said that one of the things that happened during her awakening, was that she suddenly began to have loving compassion for her THOUGHTS.

Instead of viewing them as “the enemy,” she began to see them much like a mother sees a child who is misguided; with compassion, love and an open heart. And so when a thought arose that said, “I want everyone to like me.” Her response was now a genuinely compassionate: “Of course you do, dear, of course!” It’s amazing what loving your thoughts, versus trying to stop them or change them, will do.

And once she was able to love them as they were (the idea of being “mean” to them suddenly was tantamount to mean to one’s own child!), she was able to see that in fact they were simply one tiny perspective, and not the truth, or the way things “really are.” That no thought was inherently true. And so this is why “questioning every thought” became the core of her teaching, THE WORK.

-Michael Jeffreys

The fact that both of these are true and necessary is not something often something I hear said, but either side without the other is, I think, unhealthy.

***TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ENERGY is the only way to ‘help the world’.***

“But what about those in need? How does this message work for a starving child? What good does it do for the world out there?? What about the wars, the pollution, the rape, the killing, the abuse? And what about those that murder? Should they be told to follow their highest joy as well?”

If you’d really care about all those people you use so eagerly in your imaginations to excuse yourself from having to look at yourself right here, right now and apply the teachings FOR YOURSELF, you’d stop caring about them… <<Read the previous sentence again before continuing.

Let it sink in: “If you would TRULY care about other people, you would stop caring about – or being concerned for – them.”

For that is the only way to help anyone: to be more fully awake to the causeless joy that is YOU, and to be less obsessed with, and aware of: ‘other people’s problems’. The more you are concerned with ‘others’, the less you help the world change into a higher frequency version of itself.

More world-consciousness = More misery for everyone.
Less world-consciousness = A better world within no-time.

Trust me, or don’t, but at least stop abusing those imaginary people you pretend to care so much about just to serve your own need to hide behind your fears and excuses.

Take responsibility by letting everyone be taken care of by their own highest good and intelligence. You get in tune with yours, live with integrity, self-awareness and enjoy the permission to forget about other people’s welfare.

In this self-fulfillment, you will naturally become a better person and a greater force of Light anyway. It’s the only way to help anyone. You don’t really care about ‘them’ anyway, so stop using them simply because you are comfortable living behind the walls of your fear and pretense. Don’t pervert their innocence. They have nothing to do with this moment, so leave them out of your games and don’t use ‘those out there’ as a way to hide from yourself.

Simply be most authentically your true Self and compassion will naturally arise IN THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT ACTUALLY APPEAR WITHIN YOUR FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS RIGHT HERE AND NOW. Anything that doesn’t immediately occur to your direct experience, doesn’t need your care and attention! If you’re meant to go to africa to feed babies or stop murderers, YOU WILL. If you’re not there now, THEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT IT.

The longer you keep projecting this ‘disastrous world full of suffering’ outside of your immediate field of perception, the more your energy field embodies a powerful negative quality and emanation (even if you think you’re doing it out of the right intentions) that energy will actually perpetuate that reality outside of yourself. Everything is energy, so simply check what type of energy you are experiencing within yourself right now, for that is what you are sending out into the world.

By pretending to care so much about ‘them’ and wasting all your time and energy on worry, concern and a taught, innocent, yet false sense of righteousness, you’re actually perpetuating the very state that ‘they’ appear to be in. As such, you’re not helping them by pulling them into the equation of these teachings, you’re actually one of the perpetrators and officers of their condition. Yep! I’m not kidding.

You are killing people by pretending to be concerned for those that are being killed. You are raping people by wasting your energy imagining there are those out there who are being raped.

A better world starts with your energy changing to a joyful, loving, care-free one. Care/Concern = fear-energy, IT IS NOT LOVE. Let me repeat, for society has told you differently for many many years:

*** Care = Fear | Love = Care-Free ***

Break free from the spell of pretense that you care about anyone but yourself. Then, you’ll find a care that is based in honesty, Self-Awareness, presence, love and self-responsibility, not in abusive imaginations labeled ‘care and concern for a world I don’t see at the moment but have been told is somewhere out there that I should worry about all the time. I don’t deserve my own attention and happiness until I fix the world’.

Keep your attention on yourself at all times. You’re not responsible for anyone else’s highest good. Stop imposing your fear-based beliefs unto their paths. Stop interfering with what they need and desire to experience.

If you wish to help, you have to be an example of a higher frequency of being altogether, which can only establish itself if you stay awake and present to your immediate Self, with trust, love, joy and acceptance. It cannot come about through awareness of projections of ‘others and their problems out there’. Forget about the world. Its the only way to transform it.

What energy are you sending out into the universe RIGHT NOW within yourself? What are you feeling, creating and being energetically right NOW?

And NOW?

And NOW?

And NOW?

And NOW?

Stay with you, leave ‘them’ alone.

♥

(from a Facebook group)

“We have been told we are at the start of the second industrial revolution, a concept which seemed radical yesterday, commonplace today. I agree with the idea, though it might be more useful to consider the process we are experiencing as the third rather than the second revolution.

“By my counting, the first occurred when mankind learned to plant and harvest, so ending the nomadic age of the hunter-gatherer, who perforce spent most of his time, at least during long parts of the year, in pursuit of food.

“The farmer, as we have come to think of these first revolutionaries, was able by his husbandry to feed himself and several others, freeing those from the need to feed themselves. They turned to making things – spades for the garden, buckets and bowls for the house, chariots and ships in which to explore the world. They began to write and record, to frame laws and to protect large areas from their enemies.

“Many must have mourned the loss of a simpler, more innocent existence; indeed, the story of the garden of Eden may reflect this; but the change broadened mankind, the population grew and spread. There was no chance of return.

“The second great change occurred around the end of the eighteenth century when we learned to make things not with hand-held tools but with machines. In truth, the change was a gradual one; garment-making machines, though hand-powered, pre-date the pyramids and many examples can be found in Roman times of large-scale industry. So perhaps the essential element in what we call the industrial revolution was the invention of steam power, which not only provided the engines for industry but also the power for transport. The energy in coal replaced the energy in wind.

“Again, population leapt, again men travelled far more, again larger territories were defended, again men came to long for an arcadian past which existed more in fantasy than in truth, but the simple items of our daily life, the furnishings of our dwellings, became immensely more abundant. Many more were freed by this profusion to lead more contemplative, studious lives in our universities to the eventual benefit of the advance of science.

“So we come to the third great change which is seen to be upon us, the second industrial revolution as it may be. Partly this is concerned with the replacement of people in factories by robots and computers. Partly, it is the leap made possible in the manipulation and transmission of information. Wholly it is down to the computer in one way or another and once again millions of people will be freed by the change to adopt other pursuits.

“From a positive viewpoint they are free from the drudgery of the mill. Negatively and realistically they are unemployed and very miserable. This is a sad consequence and we are not so able to manage our affairs to prevent it but it is a temporary pattern, I believe, caused by the incredibly rapid loss of manufacturing employment. Where in the 1940s 50 percent of people worked in factories, not 10 percent will work only half a century later. This revolution will broaden horizons as much as the other two.

“This, then, is one way of looking at the way we live that is current and becoming popular. It is probably reasonable but if we focus on an analogy with the industrial revolution, we will miss a much more dramatic analogy. Instead of looking back centuries and millennia for a comparison with our times, I would draw you back a million times further into the past than the beginnings of civilisation.

“Four thousand million years ago, when the universe was only half the size it is now and the solar system only five million years old, a singular thing happened – life. By some ineluctable process in the primordial soup, stirred by fierce cosmic rays and bolts of lightning, carbon compounds of strange complexity formed and re-formed, growing in subtlety until they came to transmute sunlight and to replicate. For a billion years, these first bacteria, so mysteriously conjured, clumping together to form living reefs called stromatolites, were the only life. Yet three billion years later they evolved into mankind.

“I said that the event that started this process was singular and so, for all we know, it was. So it will long remain. All life is carbon-based and carbon is exceptional in the variety of compounds to which it leads, providing organisms with a rich choice of building materials. If we ever discover life on other planets we would not be surprised to find it similarly based on carbon but it might not be so.

“When I was a boy I read science fiction stories and in those days a common theme was the discovery of a life form strangely different from ours. A popular idea was for life based not on carbon compounds but on silicon on the grounds, I believe, that silicon, too, can form a wealth of products, many of them physically useful. Soon, I suggest, those stories will seem strangely prescient, for silicon-base life will exist. It will not have emerged from millions of years of trial and error in energetic protoplasm but from a mere century or less of man’s endeavour. I am suggesting that the path the silicon-based electronics industry is on will lead to life.

“The human brain contains, I am told, 10 thousand million cells and each of these may have a thousand connections. Such enormous numbers used to daunt us and cause us to dismiss the possibility of making a machine with human-like ability but now we have grown used to moving forward at such a pace we can be less sure.  Soon, in only 10 or 20 years perhaps, we will be able to assemble a machine as complex as the human brain and if we can we will. It may then take us a long time to render it intelligent by loading in the proper software or by altering the architecture but that, too, will happen.

“I think it certain that in decades, not centuries, machines of silicon will arise first to rival and then surpass their human progenitors. Once they surpass us they will be capable of their own design. In a real sense they will be reproductive. Silicon will have ended carbon’s long monopoly – and ours too, I suppose, for we will no longer be able to deem ourselves the finest intelligence in the known universe. In principle it could be stopped; there will be those who try but it will happen nonetheless. The lid of Pandora’s box is starting to open.

“Let us look a little closer to the present. By the end of this decade manufacturing decline will be almost complete, with employment in manufacturing industries less than 10 percent in Britain. The goods are still needed but, as with agriculture already, imports and technical change will virtually remove all employment.

“Talk of information technology may be misleading. It is true that one of the features of the coming years is the dramatic fall, perhaps by a factor of 100, in the cost of publishing as video disc technology replaces paper and this may be as significant as the invention of the written word and Caxton’s introduction of movable type.

“Talk of information technology confuses an issue – it is used to mean people handling information rather than handling machines and there is little that is fundamental in this. The real revolution which is just starting is one of intelligence. Electronics is replacing man’s mind, just as steam replaced man’s muscle but the replacement of the slight intelligence employed on the production line is only the start.

“The Japanese, with the ICOT program, are aiming to make computers dealing with concepts rather than numbers with thousands of times more power than current large machines. This has triggered a swift and powerful response in the American nation. There is a large joint programme of development among leading U.S. computer companies; it is at least as large as [the] DARPA program and IBM, though it says nothing, may have the biggest programme of all.

“These projects are aimed at what are loosely termed fifth-generation computers. These really are a new breed of machine entirely and will be as different from today’s computers as today’s computer is from an adding machine. Powerful as these new engines will be, they will not remain inordinately expensive, thanks to the progress of the semiconductor industry. Once available they will start to replace human intelligence at ever higher levels of abstraction.

“The simple microprocessor provides sufficient intelligence for current assembly line robots. As robots learn to see and feel, their brains will grow. Eventually, and not too far in the future, they will make decisions on the production line currently delegated to a supervisor.

“Outside the factory we employ men’s minds in two principal ways, as fonts of knowledge and as makers of decisions. The former of these attributes is now falling prey to the machine with the  development of ‘expert systems’ whereby the acquired knowledge of a man, an expert in mining for example, is made to repose in the memory of a computer. The transfer of data from human to machine is neither easy nor swift but, once attained, it may be copied at will and broadcast. A formerly scarce resource can thus become plentiful.

“The ability to reach wise conclusions, as we expect of a doctor or lawyer, from much or scant data will long remain man’s monopoly but not always. Fifth-generation computers will share this prerogative. Tomorrow we may take our ailments to a machine as readily as to a man. In time that machine will be in the house, removing the need for a journey to the doctor and providing a far more regular monitoring of the state of health than it is now economic to provide.

“The computer as surrogate teacher may bring even more benefits. Today, and as long as we depend on humans, we must have one teacher to many pupils. The advantage of a tutor for each child is clear and if that tutor is also endlessly patient and superhumanly well-informed we may expect a wonderful improvement in the standard of education.

“What, though, is the purpose if, in this imagined future, there are no jobs? Curiously we can find analogies in the past. Freemen of Periclean Athens led not such different lives as we might live, for where we will have the machines, they had slaves who served both to teach and as menials. Thanks, perhaps, to their fine education, the freemen of Athens seem not to have found difficulty in filling their time. Just as they did, we will need to educate our children to an appreciation of the finer things of life, to inculcate a love of art, music and science. So we may experience an age as golden as that of Greece.

“Machines will be capable of replacing men in tasks requiring complex motor functions. Strangely I think it may be easier to make a machine to teach mathematics or Latin than to make one play tennis, for the latter task calls for an astonishingly fine and rapid prediction and decision, coupled to precise action, but still it can and will be done. Not to relieve us of the pleasure of playing games but to relieve us of the monotony and danger of nearly as complex a task, that of driving a car.

“We took to cars for the freedom they conferred to travel from any one place to another at any time, secure from the elements. We have paid a price in the mortality of our peoples and the pollution of our lands. We have chosen to restrain these remarkable vehicles to much less than half the speeds they could readily attain to mitigate these two evils.

“The future promises a better solution. I anticipate totally automatic personal vehicles with all the freedom in space and time of today’s cars but guided by machine intelligence. They will be powered by electricity drawn from internal batteries in towns and on minor roads and from a main supply of the highways, possibly coupled inductively into the vehicle. These latter-day cars will be well nigh silent and clean but, above all, free from human fallibility. They need not then be restricted to 55 or 70 mph on main roads. Speeds of more than 200mph should be safely and economically possible.

“Magnetic levitation might replace wheels with advantages in the quality of ride, in silence and in the longevity of the vehicle which, having no moving parts, would need no regular servicing. It is entirely possible that the performance of these vehicles will become such as to obsolete aircraft for all but the longest journeys and those over water.

“The linking of the telephone to ever more sophisticated computing machinery is leading to major improvements in the service available. The latest of these is the cellular radio system of communication now growing in this and certain other American cities. I see this as a partial solution to the general problem of permitting people to telephone one another, no matter when or where. It is but temporary economic restraint, not technical fundament, which bars us from the logical conclusion of truly personal telephones. Carried on or about the person, these wireless devices would allow us to telephone and be telephoned wherever we choose. I would not need to know the whereabouts of the person I was calling – only his number, since this would be particular to him wherever he was, instead of a fixed instrument as is usual now.

“I believe this is achievable by an extension of the cellular principle in area and capacity, the latter requiring a much finer granularity of the system. That is to say the controlling transceivers will need to be far more closely spaced.

“It often seems that each new step in technology brings misery rather than contentment but this is because it brings change faster than benefits, and change, though often stimulating, is always disturbing. So it is and will be with the intelligence revolution but here the benefits to come handsomely outweigh the trauma. Even our most intractable problems may prove soluble.

“Consider, for example, the imprisonment of offenders. Unless conducted with a biblical sense of retribution, this procedure attempts to reduce crime by deterrence and containment. It is, though, very expensive and the rate of recidivism lends little support to its curative properties.

“Given a national telephone / computer net such as I have described briefly, an alternative appears. Less than physically dangerous criminals could be fitted with tiny transponders so that their whereabouts, to a high degree of precision, could be monitored and recorded constantly. Should this raise fears of an Orwellian society we could offer miscreants the alternative of imprisonment. I am confident of the general preference.

“Intelligent robots will also help to care for the elderly who might even find companionship. Sleeplessly vigilant, the robot could provide for normal physical needs and watch for medical problems. As the intelligence of robots increases to emulate that of humans and as their cost declines through economies of scale, we may use them to expand our frontiers, first on Earth through their ability to withstand environments inimical to ourselves. Thus, deserts may bloom and the ocean beds be mined.

“Further ahead, by a combination of the great wealth this new age will bring and the technology it will provide, we can really begin to use space to our advantage. The construction of a vast, man-created world in space, home to thousands or millions of people, will be within our power and, should we so choose, we may begin in earnest the search for worlds beyond our solar system and the colonisation of the galaxy.”

(given in 1984 to the U.S. Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, and published in the UK in the August edition of ‘Sinclair User’ magazine that year, by ECC Publications, ISSN 0262-5458.)

Attachment is love in essence. Why are we so attached? Because we care and don’t want to lose. Why do we care? Because we love. Its just a poor interpretation of love, which brings about attachment.

I’d say attachment to buddhism liberates itself when one is sincere in practice. When the time is right the practice unfolds and destroys itself but until then it isn’t smart to unattach to buddhism, especially right view (Three marks, Four noble truths, Etc)

Many tend to follow this trend of anti intellectualism or anti concepts. This awareness practice is important but it shouldn’t negate view and intelligence. As that would be a reaction against our minds.

And some even create a split between mind and heart. If we are overly intellectual we cannot feel and vice versa. I would highly suggest examining why the heart and mind cannot communicate to one another and why we need an illusory split.

With regards to attachment as a whole. Letting go practice is important and in a way the whole practice is about letting go from the gross to the subtle. But its important to realize that it is insight or realization that brings about the letting go. Not the letting go forced by us. That forced letting go turns quickly into dissociative practice where we avoid everything. Imho that is an incorrect practice and can lead one towards a heavy form of Nihilism.

So letting go is a gradual process that happens when we allow phenomena to penetrate our hearts. We do this by holding right view and exploring our experience, good or bad.

And the greatest thing we can realize is that everything is already letting go. We just need to get out of the way. We just need to stop running, stop attaching.

And in many ways letting go doesn’t bring final resolve. Everything that we can experience or have experienced will stay with us forever in the mandala. Because our pain isn’t just ours but it is the pain that we all share. Our joy isn’t just our joy but it is the joy we all share. It is the lessons we learn in both and the commonality of both that we can finally learn to hold both in our hearts and to know peace simultaneously.

“Power, not comfort, is my demand upon faith. Living faith is discomforting to the last degree. It does not offer an escape from life and its evils, but it gives a more abundant life despite all obstacles and all hardships. Faith, rightly understood, is active, not passive. Passive faith is no more a force than sight is in an eye that does not look or search out. Active faith knows no fear. It denies that God has betrayed His creatures and given the world over to darkness. It denies that men are to be judged after the appearance of race, color and opinion instead of according to the Law of Life. It denies that a society in which good will shall replace hate and intelligence co-operation supplant armed force is attainable. It denies despair. Defeat is a simply a signal to press onward. Reinforced by faith, the weakest mortal is mightier than disaster. The God within braces him against the universe; his soul is whole and equal to any emergency.”

(from The Open Door)

“You have the possibility of learning to work. The truth is, that very few people in the contemporary world have this possibility: for most people there are barriers that they cannot pass. Everyone has these barriers: they are in human nature. You have seen that it is possible to be directly connected with the Great Accumulator of Energy that is the source of all miracles. If you could be permanently connected with this source, you could pass all barriers. But you do not know how it is done, and you are not ready to be shown. Everything is still in front of you to be done, but you now have the proof that it is possible. It may take twenty, thirty or even forty years before you will be able to enter into possession of the power that was lent to you for a day. But what is a whole lifetime if such a thing is possible? Ever since I was a young boy, I have known of the existence of this power and of the barriers that separate man from it, and I searched until I found the way of breaking through them. This is the greatest secret that man can discover about human nature. Many people are convinced that they wish to be free and to know reality, but they do not know the barrier that prevents them from reaching reality. They come to me for help, but they are unwilling or unable to pay the price. It is not my fault if I cannot help them.”

He spoke again about Being and Knowledge, and the danger for me of losing everything if I relied on knowledge alone. He said grimly: “With too much knowledge, the inner barrier may become insurmountable.” ~Words of Gurdjieff by John G. Bennett in “Witness”

(stolen from a friend’s Facebook feed this morning)

“… Gradually, as we mature, we learn to recognize our own mind or self as merely a part of some greater thing or self. I can refer to this larger self as the original mind. I am then able to judge to degree of wholeness or the degree of life in a building according to the degree to which it is a picture of this original mind. Since the original mind is part of me (or I am part of it), I have it available to me, in principle, whenever I want to make this test. But I shall succeed in making my judgment only to the degree to which I have gotten rid of mistaken notions of what my own mind is, or my own self. This is an arduous task.” 

The child who was speaking in the name of the sun

used to go into the streets of the dead village;

rats would run towards his bare feet

when he stopped at the crossroads.

The child called with a voice full of ships,

white sails and flying fish,

and men who had turned into stone

creaked as they were awakened.

It was a dawn foretold by the hissing arrows

of the neighborhood’s happy archers,

men came, each carrying his night

like an umbrella.

They crouched around the child,

their big, red eyes were laughing,

their large mouths spit sand through

their teeth.

The child who was speaking in the name of the sun

said: “Listen no longer to the crow of the foolish

rooster,” and in the streets men with long lips

slapped their asses with laughter.

The child said: “You laugh, you laugh,

but when you awaken with your ears

full of blood, the you will laugh

no longer.”

His head fell, broken and warm,

on the shoulder of a young woman,

she thought he wanted to kiss her

and she laughed out of fear.

“You are laughing, you are laughing,” he said to her,

and the men showed their yellow fangs.

“Your laughter is not the alms

that the heavenly Mouth begs for.

It needs your young children,

your freshly cut noses,

it needs a harvest of toes

for its supper.”

The great Mouth laughed and laughed,

she sizzled and glistened.

“You laugh, you laugh, fearsome grandmother,

but soon, old lady, your sons and daughters

will laugh no longer, will laugh no longer.

You laugh under your evening umbrellas.

They are going to break, they are going to break,

listen to the great Mouth laugh,

for soon you will laugh no longer.”

We are living in a special time.  Throughout the world there is a stirring and an interrelation of forces never before experienced by mankind.  All around us we see an unprecedented acceleration of the possibilities of change.  Power potentials have been released which threaten to upset cosmic balances.

Ironically, the more gigantic and astonishing our manipulations of these energies, the more puerile and insignificant our understanding of them.  Philosophers and scientists are coming to agree that not only do we need a deep alteration in the present state of mankind, but that a radical shift depends solely on our relationship to consciousness – the invisible, fundamental energy behind phenomenal existence.

As one walks the streets of the city, one is struck by the energies manifested through each human being – the results of wishes, emotions, and physical movements, energies in incessant random motion.  Inextricably bound to an entire fabric of events, we have no choice but to submit to the rhythm and momentum of our ordinary lives.  Yet, in the midst of the flux, a call to consciousness can be heard.  Is it possible to accept one’s inevitable destiny, and, at the same time, open to the timeless, spaceless, essential movement?  Can we microscopic entities, beset by our frailties and mal-training, initiate a radical transformation for ourselves and for the earth?

When one first begins to work with conscious attention one discovers that the subsystems of body, feelings, and mind function inefficiently and disharmoniously.  Yet the simple awareness of misalignment may introduce an element capable of binding the disparate parts into an integrated whole.  With sustained awareness  comes a heightened sensitivity, openness, a quiet mind.  Man’s structure becomes receptive to the advent of fresh, vivifying energies descending from a mysterious source.  This creates a field, where higher energies can transform the lower.

True knowledge, to perpetuate itself, needs living forms.  Those who seek it must assimilate it directly by participation of their whole being.  It is not knowledge but the experience of the “other” that a teacher imparts.  This becomes yours; when you receive it, you can shape it in your own way to meet your particular needs.  Our life situations, our make-ups are different.  You will use the experience of wholeness to meet your life, not adapt it to my way.  This is a living teaching.  The way is shown, the experience is passed on like a light from candle to candle.  But is always an individual light.

Watchfulness at the moment of receiving an impression; the deeper the impression enters, the greater its power to do work.

What is written and printed does not yet have dramatic form. If we say to ourselves: “These words must be pronounced in a certain manner, have a certain tone or rhythm…” then, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we will always be mistaken. It leads to everything that is so awful in tradition, in the worst sense of the term. An infinite quantity of unexpected forms can appear from the same elements, and the human tendency to refuse the unexpected always leads to the reduction of a potential universe.

We are now at the heart of the problem. Nothing exists in life without form: we are forced at each instant, especially when speaking, to look for form. But one must realize that this form may be the absolute obstacle to life, which is formless. One cannot escape from this difficulty, and the battle is permanent: the form is necessary, yet it is not everything.

Faced with this difficulty, there is no point in adopting a purist attitude and waiting for the perfect form to fall from the heavens, for in that case one would never do anything at all. This attitude would be stupid. Which brings us again to the question of purity and impurity. The pure form does not come down from the sky. The putting into form is always a compromise that one must accept whilst at the same time saying to oneself: “It’s temporary, it will have to be renewed.” We are touching here on a question of dynamics which will never end.

True questions are often found in paradox and are impossible to resolve. There is a balance to be found between that which tries to be pure and that which becomes pure through its relationship to the impure. One can thus see to what extent an idealistic theatre cannot exist as long as it attempts to be outside the rough texture of this world. The pure can only be expressed in theatre through something that in its nature is essentially impure. We must remember that the theater is made by people and executed by people through their only available instruments, human beings. So the form is in its very nature a mixture where pure and impure elements meet. It is a mysterious marriage that is at the centre of legitimate experience, where private man and mythical man can be apprehended together within the same instant of time.

A great ritual, a fundamental myth is a door, a door that is not there to be observed, but to be experienced, and he who can experience the door within himself passes through it most intensely. So the past is not to be arrogantly ignored. But we must not cheat. If we steal its rituals and its symbols and try to exploit them for our own purposes, we must not be surprised if they lose their virtue and become no more than glittering and empty decorations. We are constantly challenged to discriminate. In some cases, a traditional form is still living; in another, tradition is the dead hand that strangles the vital experience. The problem is to refuse the “accepted way”, without looking for change for the sake of changing.

But what is more comforting than to discover that we are less than nothing? It’s only by turning ourselves inside out that we shall become something. Is it not a great comfort to the caterpillar to learn that she is merely a larvae, that her time of being a semi-crawling digestive tube will not last, and that after a period of confinement, in the mortuary of her chrysalis, she will again be born as a butterfly – not in some non-existant paradise dreamed up by some caterpillary, consoling philosophy, but here in this very garden, where she is now laboriously munching on her cabbage leaf? We are all caterpillars, and it is our misfortune that, in defiance of nature, we cling with all our strength to our caterpillar appetites, caterpillar passions, caterpillar metaphysics, and caterpillar societies. Only in our outward physical appearance do we bear to the observer who suffers from psychic shortsightedness and resemblance whatsoever to adults; the rest of us remain stubbornly larval. Well, I have good reasons for believing (indeed if I didn’t there’d be nothing for it but to go off and dangle from the end of a rope) that man can reach adult stage, that a few of us already have, and that those few have not kept the knack to themselves. What could be more comforting?

With difficulty, I succeeded in reaching the room above. It was a sort of operation-cum-observation post. The only means of seeing out was provided by two lenses embedded in the wall like a pair of binoculars. The room was cluttered with levers, handles, gadgets, gauges, and dials by means of which it was presumably possible to direct the movements of the mobile house.

Upon my first attempt at turning a knob, the whole place was seized by an inordinate shaking. Things cannoned into each other. I pulled on a wire, there was a terrific jolt followed by a brutal crash an an impact and then everything began to sway. I patiently continued my efforts with a feeling of utter detachment from what I was doing. Gradually, I learned which mechanisms were dangerous to engage and which had to be manipulated all the time to stop the house collapsing altogether. It was not long before I realized that it was an almost impossible thing to do and it was at that moment, fortunately, that the servants appeared.

They were large anthropomorphic apes which till now had remained lurking, invisible, and silent, in every dark recess. They stood watching me and then one of them, seeing me carry out the same maneuver for the third or forth time, came up with a gesture that indicated he would take over. The others in turn emerged from the shadows and reproducing my movements with startling exactness, assumed control of all operations required for maintaining and running the building. Free of these tasks, I sat in the cockpit in front of the binoculars surrounded by my dials and gauges. Telephone links enabled me to communicate with my apes. In this way I learned to control them, after a fashion, though this left me with very little time for rest, since at frequent intervals one of them would fall asleep, another would do as he pleased, and I had to bring them to heal.

Or again, an unexpected jolt would sometimes throw me right out of my seat down to the floor below where my fall causes confusion: the pump and bellows would begin to race – for once the moment of danger is passed, the anesthetized emotions start getting their own back – and I had very great difficulty climbing back up again.

Training apes to maintain and work the machine is not easy. Training them to keep a steady balance between the machines input and output is less easy still. But to train apes to drive the vehicle – I cannot imagine when I will even dare hope to manage such a thing. But only then will I be master, free to go where I like without ties or fears or illusions. But I’m dreaming again.