conscientious ranting

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Let's talk about fog. Or, as is one of the benefit of this medium, I'll talk, and you'll listen. Let us center our minds now, on the aspects of our identity that lie in obscuring shade. The funky smells we don't let ourselves detect, the irritating buzz we pretend to not hear. All metaphorically speaking, though. We are all soap cented clean, and we have long since forsaken silence. Herein lies the problem.

We nest, here, upon our tower of souls, where the foul things are supressed to a minimum, for comfortable denial. Denial of the harsh truth. We do not know ourselves. We are chaos. And outward the glistening facade is playing the rock, showing ease, showing wisdom. A shell, this facade is, a forcefield sealing the world off from the black holes that our unsearched souls really are. An our souls remain unsearched, because they are contained within this field, never being alowed to freely reflect themselves, because we see ourselves from the outside.

Any and all reflection is strictly policed. By religion. By dogma and tradition, and more recently fashion. Our consumer habits, and the way they are encouraged by even greater consumers is real confirmation. There is an easy, prefabricated answer on offer for every concievable question. It's almost as if we have given up on the goal of stilling our hunger, and settled for satiation. The modern meaning of the word identity has become the mix of brands you're wearing, the car you're driving and how you earned the money to buy it. We replace it as often as we can. Get the newest model. Why?

There is an easy answer why. Idle time. In idle moments we might come to think about the black hole that's pulling at us. About all the things that are bothering us. Irritations we live with, suppress and battle against. It is a battle no one can win, so we escape the field, and bury ourselves under dousins of fabricated needs that require satisfying. Then we tell ourselves that is why we're here. To live forever with stuffed bellies and hungry mouths. Satiation is the compromise.

One of many compromises, come to think of it. Another is the various agendas on the global political stage. We seem torn between two conflicting driving forces, needing the boost of both, but struggling with their inevitable conflict every day. The paradox is that without the harsh and unjust trade laws that send most of the profit our way, we would not be able to police the world and maintain the fragile peace that is near breaking many places across the globe. Our good deeds are funded by our bad deeds. Our good deeds are needed because of our bad deeds. So instead of peace we go for eternal truce, continously bargained for. But who can bargain with such leverage? So we meet again, said the hammer to the anvil...

Then there's the careful and onerous trivialization and disarming of the facts, that we all hide behind. It is conducted with great skill and care, this process, and the aim is to justify our conduct, our turning want to need so recklessly. Feeding the void, delaying the inevitable confrontation with the big black holes in the deepest cores of our personalities. In truth it is not a hole at all, and certainly not black. It's more like uncharted territory. Wisdom carried through the generations unheeded, and now, because of satiation, unsought.

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Hmmm....an interesting stylistic departure. Smile

Have you read Gurdjieff ? This sounds somewhat like his description of "ordinary man" who essentially "asleep" most of the time and is run by a committee of disjointed "little me's". There are also aspects of Krishnamurti's ideas on "conditioning".

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Cryacuz says--

--"Any and all reflection is strictly policed. By religion. By dogma and tradition, and more recently fashion."

I think that the act of reflection has been attenuated to the point that those who rule us by propaganda do not need to focus attention on detail but they focus on attenuating our curiosity and reflection to keep us benign and bovine like.

--"The modern meaning of the word identity has become the mix of brands you're wearing,"

Our ID has become ?'consumer' and we, with the herd instinct driving us, grade our worth based upon what we own.

--"harsh and unjust trade laws that send most of the profit our way, we would not be able to police the world and maintain the fragile peace that is near breaking many places across the globe."

This is our delusion of being faced with "The White's Man's Burden". This has been our excuse for pillaging the third world throughout history.

--"Then there's the careful and onerous trivialization and disarming of the facts, that we all hide behind. It is conducted with great skill and care, this process, and the aim is to justify our conduct, our turning want to need so recklessly. Feeding the void, delaying the inevitable confrontation with the big black holes in the deepest cores of our personalities. In truth it is not a hole at all, and certainly not black. It's more like uncharted territory. Wisdom carried through the generations unheeded, and now, because of satiation, unsought."

Through emulating the process of reflection that you are doing we all can learn to do likewise and step above our bovine nature of staring vacantly into the distance or running with the herd.

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No fresco, I haven't read Gurdjieff. But I may have been exposed to his ideas indirectly.

Incidentally, I am working on a story of sorts under the title of 'diaries of a sleepwalker'. The idea is an attempt to clarify the border between reality and fantasy. This is all for my own benefit, and not not spurred by further ambition. I just like to rant. Smile

Anyway, the exact point where fantasy and reality merge is not easy to find, and I suspect that this border is one continously crossed and very ill-defined. Maybe just another dualitic notion?

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G.I. Gurdjieff wrote

Quote:

In order to understand what the difference between states of consciousness is, let us consider the state of sleep. This is an entirely subjective state of consciousness.

A man is immersed in dreams, whether he remembers them or not, does not matter. Even if some real impression reach him, such as sounds, voices, warmth, cold, etc., they arouse in him only subjective images.

Then a man wakes up. At first glance, this is a completely new and different state of consciousness. He can move, talk with other people, he can make calculations ahead, he can see danger and avoid it, and so on. It stands to reason that he is now in a better position than when he was asleep.

But if we go a little more deeply into things, if we take a look into his inner world, into his thoughts, into the causes of his actions, we shall see that he is almost in the same state as when he is asleep.

And it is even worse, because in sleep he is passive, but in the waking state he can do something and the results of his actions will be reflected upon him and upon those around him. And yet he does not remember himself.

He is a machine, everything with him happens. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot focus the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention.

He lives in a subjective world of "I love", "I do not love", "I like", "I do not like", "I want", "I do not want", that is, of what he thinks he likes, of what he thinks he does not like, of what he thinks he wants, of what he thinks he does not want. He does not see the real world.

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Quote:

Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.

Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.

Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

The Big Chill

Quote:

"Life is something that should not have been."

Schopenhauer

Life is too overwhelming for most of us, except for saints and madman. We flee to the shadows and peek out now and again.

and Gurdjieff was considered a saint by some and madman by others.

Hiyah Fresco!

Sounds like its time to go back and read Beelzebub once more, eh?

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kuvasz,

Nice to hear from you ! There are occasions on A2K that a mention of G looks viable. Many times, as you well know, its like shouting into the wind !

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fresco wrote:

kuvasz,

Nice to hear from you ! There are occasions on A2K that a mention of G looks viable. Many times, as you well know, its like shouting into the wind !

It is "double plus good" to hear from you my friend. It has been too long since we shared our ideas. I hope all good things come to you.

Krishnamurti would ask us why worry about what others think, let it rip!

I don't worry about the pearls I cast that go trampled, its their casting that I find of truer value.

I'm just a wire, the current flows through me.

Saint Paul might say, "I live now not I, but Christ in me."

I was serious about how we all hide in the shadows, and peek out onto a world that scares and bewilders us. Gurdjieff was speaking of an integration of self and of honesty that Jesus was speaking about too.

Funny how when you are blinded by the Godhood of Jesus, his message to lead wholly a (holy?) life gets blurred.

Krishnamurti comes as close as I have seen to the methods Jesus was teaching in the words and parables handed down by the traditions of Christianity.

Nietzsche comes close, but he is too, shall we say, "self-ish."

Humans need each other. Where there are two people, there are more than two. It is the meaning of the Church Jesus preached.

The one, great positive message Jesus repeatedly tried to express was the thought that no individual could know himself unless his inner honesty was complete. The peace he talked about was of an inner peace.

The way to it was through truth and through the abandonment of preoccupation with temporal matters, with worldly goods, with trade and gain. While he did not overlook the necessity of objective living, he admonished against considering a life oriented wholly outward to matter as a satisfying life.

The light he to which he so often made reference was the light of truth, inner truth.

Thomas II: 20. Saying (3) "Jesus said, ?' If those who lead you say to you, "See, the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ?'It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you.' Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father."

No man, according to him, could know himself unless he knew all the inferior and negative aspects of himself. A man who did not know himself could not in anyway trust what he thought about other men or the world.

This is the first obviously essential step of self-knowledge leads to further developments of wisdom and understanding which could be followed to the outermost capacity of each individual and which in the case of most deeply reasoning, honest and imaginative individuals would lead to a transcendental experience.

His premise was that an individual is able through self-honesty, integrity alone to follow the elements of his subjective nature to their outermost boundaries. There any one would find the boundary infinite and immortal.

Jesus took the very solid position that unless you know who you are you don't know what you are thinking about and you can only find out who you are by a difficult job of detachment and self appraisal.

If Jesus came to save us, he did it by teaching us the tools to save ourselves.

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Thanks for the intro to Gurdijeff. I haven't heard of him before... Smile

kurvasz wrote:

I was serious about how we all hide in the shadows, and peek out onto a world that scares and bewilders us. Gurdjieff was speaking of an integration of self and of honesty that Jesus was speaking about too.

It seems to me that all our famous wise men through the ages were pretty much speaking about the same things.
Maybe the only difference between Jesus and the Buddha, for instance, is the worlds they lived in. Jesus would have used phrases, angles and logic patterns compatible with his age and the ways of his people. So would the Buddha have done in his time, and since the message is reflected through the culture the wise man lived in, it is possible that the figures that our conflicting religions were founded on were all conveying the same message.

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Cyracuz wrote:

It seems to me that all our famous wise men through the ages were pretty much speaking about the same things. Maybe the only difference between Jesus and the Buddha, for instance, is the worlds they lived in. Jesus would have used phrases, angles and logic patterns compatible with his age and the ways of his people. So would the Buddha have done in his time, and since the message is reflected through the culture the wise man lived in, it is possible that the figures that our conflicting religions were founded on were all conveying the same message.

Quote:

"Truth has many aspects. Infinite truth has infinite expressions. Though the sages speak in diverse ways, they express one and the same Truth. The ignorant say, "What I believe is true; others are wrong." It is because of this attitude of the ignorant that there have been doubts and misunderstandings about God. It is this attitude that causes dispute among men. But all doubts vanish when one masters the self and finds peace by realizing the heart of Truth. Thereupon dispute, too, is at an end."

Hinduism, Srimad Bhagavatam 11.15

Quote:

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Jesus, Gospel of Thomas

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