I don't have things nailed down that tight these days about what's wot these days. Everything could be anything or nothing at all. I've begun to realize that some of the more significant moments in my life are more interrelated that I had allowed for. Interdependent, co-dependent, and sequential in a way I'd never knowingly apperceived before as the piece to play as the crown and the thorn.
Much of what's gnawing at me now has to do with the question I've raised for myself about how to distinguish between the results of using a system of expertise as opposed to reaching for a talent or gift from God.
I semi-concluded that one approach required a learning curve, while the other was a vocation that didn't offer options for reframing once called. Maybe it's sort of like that or not. Currently it seems like or appears to be like both approaches of gift and expertise are needed one for the other, and moreover, they need to work together like a pair of eyes.
This last year or so I read Jean-Paul Sartre's masterwork Being and Nothingness at bedtime. It took a long time and I never felt certain that I understood his intent, but I kept on keeping on and finished the whole thing. Somewhere I read that it was recommended to go back after reading the whole book and read the Introduction again, so I'm doing that. I find it difficult to believe that I got anything at all from the first reading of Being and Nothingness, because I had completely missed out on some much of what is told in the Introduction.
I'm reading very slow and repeating myself deliberately. I read a couple of pages a night, and then read the same two pages the next night, and then another one or two. The repetition and redundancy seems to fill me up with me-and-ing. Last night I meditated for an hour before I went upstairs to go to bed, and so I wasn't sleepy. I read several pages aloud and three or four other pages to repeat tonight. When I turned out the light to sleep I was positively glowing from thinking I got it this time.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
A Vocation Is Called For
There is a story I would like to tell, and there is a personal audience for it, so they say, but I am is was there, and what happened can only be conveyed by a competent vocationist (a called person) rather then the instigator of the response to the event. The instigation was passive. There is literally nothing to say because of a deliberately arranged lack of perspective. In my subjective view I did nothing, and the audience and witnesses provided all the incentive or inspiration necessary to do what they did. My lack of participation was inspired itself, because nothingness is extremely difficult to mimick, and unfortunately necessary for making a conscious return to the cosmic soup to fetch the possibles you left it for to accomplish being as a stranger in a strange land.
If you happen to encounter a homo sapiens devoid of all the attributes you normally take for granted you might be astonished if you self-observe in that moment. You might be dumbfounded at how you might react to such a meeting. I've watched myself reach for every assuring posture I've ever explored in any dimension or realm to help me adjust to my flabbergasted state of being, in order to do the right thing as resolutely as I could. When I consider my own reactions in this sort of divine intervention, every single time there have been slim pickings among the possible solutions that popped up to save the day. Which indicates to me there's some truth in the claim that homo sapiens can't know their own abstract possibles in real time.
I don't think humans are much different than bats when it comes to feeling our way around in the dark. We constantly send out a bunch of tacit, weak signals and base our behavior on their return. As if what bats do and what humans do is similar to how RADAR works.
So what do you suppose happens when you're out there ditty-bopping around the streets and countryside doing yo' thang, and you enter a dead signal zone (I don't own a cellphone, so I just have to guess if that's an equivalency). Examine your thoughts. Contemplate your life. When has this ever happened before, and how did you react to nothingness then?
I'm not writing about something complicated, but maybe it's a little like walking into a room where you notice someone kneeling down or bowed over, and appear to be sincerely praying, such that their entire attention seems to be engaged in their efforts to establish communication with whatever god they pray to. Were you alone when that happened? Did you tiptoe away to show respect for what you might expect of them, or screech and point derisively at what might seem foolish behavior for you?
A star athlete is serving or putting for the championship. Chatter, chatter, chatter about the possibilities, and then, just before the decisive moment, absolute silence suddenly develops in order for the fans to share the emptiness of distracting thoughts the athlete needs to invoke to give themselves their best shot.
Does it seem like to you that people have to deliberately empty their psyche of abstract thoughts to accomplish such a desired end to basically any serious endeavor? Sort of like attempting to make the perfect shot at the last second to win the game? Can this moment be shared by millions of spectators all over the world via the media in some humongous instantaneity?
instantaneity
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from medieval Latin instantaneus, from Latin instant- ‘being at hand’ (from the verb instare), on the pattern of ecclesiastical Latin momentaneus.
Is a moment like this the epitome of being or nothingness? Sartre asserts that "negation can never be derived from being." Being can't ex-is-t without a ground nor a ground for being without nothingness. Being be-co-me-s nothingness to escape the plenitude into individuation, but it can't remember it's own possibles in that state of being due to the denial and negation it uses as a tool to upsurge into being. All the possibles that tempted it into being-for-itself are necessarily left behind in the plentitude behind the closed doors of nothingness. That's why Being is a second-hand state that depends on nothingness to provide it with a leg (ground) to stand on. But, that sa-me nothingness prevents it from acting from the deep certainty of irrefutable gnosis. Nothingness IS the tie-that-binds (time) our hearts together in equality before the Law.
The plenitude or fullness thereof, the id, the cosmic soup are metaphors or allegories representing the specious present, the eternal now of which it can only be said, "It is.". It's only from this infinite maelstrom of undifferentiated, almost unstoppable activity that anything can happen at all, and yet whatever does happen must happen in and of itself despite nagging temptations to invoke fate with hat-in-hand, like whistling one's way past the cemetery on moonless nights.
I make this crap up in the spur of the moment to entertain myself. I can't afford professional entertainers to do it for me. It's just something to say. Something to whistle on dark nights. "Eine kleine Nachtmusik." I wouldn't know the truth if it bit me on the ass. '-)
If you happen to encounter a homo sapiens devoid of all the attributes you normally take for granted you might be astonished if you self-observe in that moment. You might be dumbfounded at how you might react to such a meeting. I've watched myself reach for every assuring posture I've ever explored in any dimension or realm to help me adjust to my flabbergasted state of being, in order to do the right thing as resolutely as I could. When I consider my own reactions in this sort of divine intervention, every single time there have been slim pickings among the possible solutions that popped up to save the day. Which indicates to me there's some truth in the claim that homo sapiens can't know their own abstract possibles in real time.
I don't think humans are much different than bats when it comes to feeling our way around in the dark. We constantly send out a bunch of tacit, weak signals and base our behavior on their return. As if what bats do and what humans do is similar to how RADAR works.
So what do you suppose happens when you're out there ditty-bopping around the streets and countryside doing yo' thang, and you enter a dead signal zone (I don't own a cellphone, so I just have to guess if that's an equivalency). Examine your thoughts. Contemplate your life. When has this ever happened before, and how did you react to nothingness then?
I'm not writing about something complicated, but maybe it's a little like walking into a room where you notice someone kneeling down or bowed over, and appear to be sincerely praying, such that their entire attention seems to be engaged in their efforts to establish communication with whatever god they pray to. Were you alone when that happened? Did you tiptoe away to show respect for what you might expect of them, or screech and point derisively at what might seem foolish behavior for you?
A star athlete is serving or putting for the championship. Chatter, chatter, chatter about the possibilities, and then, just before the decisive moment, absolute silence suddenly develops in order for the fans to share the emptiness of distracting thoughts the athlete needs to invoke to give themselves their best shot.
Does it seem like to you that people have to deliberately empty their psyche of abstract thoughts to accomplish such a desired end to basically any serious endeavor? Sort of like attempting to make the perfect shot at the last second to win the game? Can this moment be shared by millions of spectators all over the world via the media in some humongous instantaneity?
instantaneity
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from medieval Latin instantaneus, from Latin instant- ‘being at hand’ (from the verb instare), on the pattern of ecclesiastical Latin momentaneus.
Is a moment like this the epitome of being or nothingness? Sartre asserts that "negation can never be derived from being." Being can't ex-is-t without a ground nor a ground for being without nothingness. Being be-co-me-s nothingness to escape the plenitude into individuation, but it can't remember it's own possibles in that state of being due to the denial and negation it uses as a tool to upsurge into being. All the possibles that tempted it into being-for-itself are necessarily left behind in the plentitude behind the closed doors of nothingness. That's why Being is a second-hand state that depends on nothingness to provide it with a leg (ground) to stand on. But, that sa-me nothingness prevents it from acting from the deep certainty of irrefutable gnosis. Nothingness IS the tie-that-binds (time) our hearts together in equality before the Law.
The plenitude or fullness thereof, the id, the cosmic soup are metaphors or allegories representing the specious present, the eternal now of which it can only be said, "It is.". It's only from this infinite maelstrom of undifferentiated, almost unstoppable activity that anything can happen at all, and yet whatever does happen must happen in and of itself despite nagging temptations to invoke fate with hat-in-hand, like whistling one's way past the cemetery on moonless nights.
I make this crap up in the spur of the moment to entertain myself. I can't afford professional entertainers to do it for me. It's just something to say. Something to whistle on dark nights. "Eine kleine Nachtmusik." I wouldn't know the truth if it bit me on the ass. '-)
Friday, December 5, 2008
Childhood, The Place
I just talked to Rainey on the telephone. He told me he had read this entry and it didn't make sense to him. I read it over and admit it's a little tight-fisted with the insight bit. I'm too lazy to rewrite. Maybe I'll do better manana.
I don't particularly intend to be silly about this, but silliness is sometimes the only way I seem able to approach this ritual. It's about rebirth and be-co-me-ing a child again. Yesterday I wrote about my old father displaying his temporary joy at being like a child again. Writing about that reminded me of the event of my leaving my first wife, and I wrote about that as a blog entry. Later, I found myself comparing my father's escapade in the hospital, and me running away from a marriage that was turning me into a drunk. Ugh!
It was the freedom and delight I saw when my father danced nakid in the hospital hallways in his dotage, and the freedom and light-heartedness I felt when I walked out to I-95 from my best-ever job to hitch-hike to Key West to continue my intended exodus from conventional ways, that I realized this particular form of delight or light-heartedness could be a way-sign or omen that I am is entering the portal to Childhood. In this sense, Childhood is a place. A place that can be visited by grown-ups if they can let go of the being of ex-is-tense, and fall back into the plenitude without losing consciousness.
It's possible for me to fall on my knees and worship adoringly a person totally absorbed in an ecstatic state of Being If I'm currently witnessing it transpire no matter how many other people are watching. I might be discrete about it. I don't know if I would literally drop to my old arthritic knees (that might blow the whole mood... Aaaayyyyiieeee!!!), but I would most certainly be brought to my knees spiritually by the direct observation of and participation in... the ecstasy of Being... no matter the source.
I don't particularly intend to be silly about this, but silliness is sometimes the only way I seem able to approach this ritual. It's about rebirth and be-co-me-ing a child again. Yesterday I wrote about my old father displaying his temporary joy at being like a child again. Writing about that reminded me of the event of my leaving my first wife, and I wrote about that as a blog entry. Later, I found myself comparing my father's escapade in the hospital, and me running away from a marriage that was turning me into a drunk. Ugh!
It was the freedom and delight I saw when my father danced nakid in the hospital hallways in his dotage, and the freedom and light-heartedness I felt when I walked out to I-95 from my best-ever job to hitch-hike to Key West to continue my intended exodus from conventional ways, that I realized this particular form of delight or light-heartedness could be a way-sign or omen that I am is entering the portal to Childhood. In this sense, Childhood is a place. A place that can be visited by grown-ups if they can let go of the being of ex-is-tense, and fall back into the plenitude without losing consciousness.
It's possible for me to fall on my knees and worship adoringly a person totally absorbed in an ecstatic state of Being If I'm currently witnessing it transpire no matter how many other people are watching. I might be discrete about it. I don't know if I would literally drop to my old arthritic knees (that might blow the whole mood... Aaaayyyyiieeee!!!), but I would most certainly be brought to my knees spiritually by the direct observation of and participation in... the ecstasy of Being... no matter the source.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Jump And Run
I just opened the outside doors because it's warmer out there than in here. It's 42 degrees Fahrenheit in here. My little space heater just won't keep up. I'm all bundled up. It's been this way forever. After at least twenty-five years of pretending to build myself a house to grow old in I should have been able to put together a more physically comfortable place than this, but I haven't. I've had to bundle up to stay warm when it gets cold from the bejinning.
I don't think I really like to be protected from the elements that much. I dream about it. I write poems about it, but despite my plaintive wailing, in the end game, I sort of make sure my projects to finish the job off never come to fruition. I find it remarkable to be me sometime. I know that's immodest and arrogant, but sometimes I can't stop myself because I am the only witness to some remarkable shit. That's why I write about it to my imaginary audience, because it's remarkable. I like to write remarks about the events that DO come to fruition in my life more so than the flip side of the coin.
When I got to be a big boy and found out there were tropical places that didn't get cold in the winter, but only perhaps nippy if the temperature get down to seventy five degrees at night. Brrrrr..., I started making excuses to go there no matter the impediments I might encounter. Like being a respectable marriage partner and/or obedient to the so-called Christian work ethic.
One of my proudest memories is when I abandoned all my responsibilities and hitch-hiked to Key West in my tailor-made three-piece suit and no luggage for the winter, and nobody but me knew where I was. When I returned, my wife and my old boss accepted me back into the fold, and "life went on, even when the thrill of living was gone."
I just related that one event to seeing my father take off all his clothes, rip all the IVs out of his dilapidated eighty-five year old arms, and go dancing like a child through the hospital halls, happy as a lark that he was doing something he shouldn't oughta be doing on purpose for fun.
I seem to have entered and exited my second-childhood at will. Maybe the bejinning is the end. Maybe my second-childhood is also my first. Is childhood merely a place to go? I know my father was bored out of his mind lying in that hospital bed day after day with the unwatched TV blaring propaganda for the living at him day after day. It's no wonder to me that he "jumped and run". Was I doing anything different when I abandoned all hope and "jumped and run" to Florida when living the way I was living was turning me into a lounge lizard and a drunk to deal with my boredom and ennui?
There was a gleefulness and a feeling of great joy I felt by walking away and doing something I ought notta. Ecstasy beyond description. To do for-myself has always been one of my greatest challenges. I resent being forced by circumstance to do for-the-other. I seem condemned by my absolute refusal to "be there" for another human being if I'd just as soon "be" anywhere I fell for.
That is how it's done in my world. I "fall-for" thangs. I read the sign above the entrance to the oracle cave, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." Falling-for things is how I enter the rabbit hole. YMMV.
I abandon the ground of being necessary to possess individuation. I be-co-me. "Be with me..." It's a matter of letting go of one's own need for their own ground of being to remember who I am is before the funny lights began to attract "me".
It took forever to let myself be absorbed into the light with less resistance in order to be-co-me. I wouldn't have know what to do if I hadn't read about what needed to happen in the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Evans-Wentz while I was in the Navy. Far out at sea. For weeks. Nothing to do but stand watch, work, eat, sleep, and read, perchance to dream. Have you ever spent week after week sequestered on a huge metal machine from which escape only invited death by asphyxiation or sea monsters, and God help you if you somehow survive.
I don't think the process for abandoning hope can be learned from external sources. I believe one can become aware that such a thing is possible, and maybe even ken the need of it before they actually attempt to let it happen. For me, it was a little like having to feel good about falling out of my bed while I was dreaming at night.
I'm sure I actually fell out of bed and was rudely awakened by a hard floor a few times, but in the latter stages of my matriculation into learning to control my dreaming, I would wake up at the last moment and realize that I was merely dreaming, and not physically falling off my bed on to a hard, cold floor at all.
I didn't set out to learn how to adjust to and restrain my unreal fears from eviscerating my mental state, it happened over time so I could get some sleep. I had to get up by myself before everybody else in the family and go down to the barn and milk the cows for a long time.
Learning to boss around and exploit huge dairy animals mano y mano by myself before I weighed a hundred pounds was a powerful incentive to figure out I wasn't really falling out of bed and ruining my sleep, and let myself fall into the cosmic soup with aplomb. I got real good at it. I thought it was to die for. Nobody knows. I haver never been able to convince a single person alive that I was right but for-me.
I don't think I really like to be protected from the elements that much. I dream about it. I write poems about it, but despite my plaintive wailing, in the end game, I sort of make sure my projects to finish the job off never come to fruition. I find it remarkable to be me sometime. I know that's immodest and arrogant, but sometimes I can't stop myself because I am the only witness to some remarkable shit. That's why I write about it to my imaginary audience, because it's remarkable. I like to write remarks about the events that DO come to fruition in my life more so than the flip side of the coin.
When I got to be a big boy and found out there were tropical places that didn't get cold in the winter, but only perhaps nippy if the temperature get down to seventy five degrees at night. Brrrrr..., I started making excuses to go there no matter the impediments I might encounter. Like being a respectable marriage partner and/or obedient to the so-called Christian work ethic.
One of my proudest memories is when I abandoned all my responsibilities and hitch-hiked to Key West in my tailor-made three-piece suit and no luggage for the winter, and nobody but me knew where I was. When I returned, my wife and my old boss accepted me back into the fold, and "life went on, even when the thrill of living was gone."
I just related that one event to seeing my father take off all his clothes, rip all the IVs out of his dilapidated eighty-five year old arms, and go dancing like a child through the hospital halls, happy as a lark that he was doing something he shouldn't oughta be doing on purpose for fun.
I seem to have entered and exited my second-childhood at will. Maybe the bejinning is the end. Maybe my second-childhood is also my first. Is childhood merely a place to go? I know my father was bored out of his mind lying in that hospital bed day after day with the unwatched TV blaring propaganda for the living at him day after day. It's no wonder to me that he "jumped and run". Was I doing anything different when I abandoned all hope and "jumped and run" to Florida when living the way I was living was turning me into a lounge lizard and a drunk to deal with my boredom and ennui?
There was a gleefulness and a feeling of great joy I felt by walking away and doing something I ought notta. Ecstasy beyond description. To do for-myself has always been one of my greatest challenges. I resent being forced by circumstance to do for-the-other. I seem condemned by my absolute refusal to "be there" for another human being if I'd just as soon "be" anywhere I fell for.
That is how it's done in my world. I "fall-for" thangs. I read the sign above the entrance to the oracle cave, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." Falling-for things is how I enter the rabbit hole. YMMV.
I abandon the ground of being necessary to possess individuation. I be-co-me. "Be with me..." It's a matter of letting go of one's own need for their own ground of being to remember who I am is before the funny lights began to attract "me".
It took forever to let myself be absorbed into the light with less resistance in order to be-co-me. I wouldn't have know what to do if I hadn't read about what needed to happen in the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Evans-Wentz while I was in the Navy. Far out at sea. For weeks. Nothing to do but stand watch, work, eat, sleep, and read, perchance to dream. Have you ever spent week after week sequestered on a huge metal machine from which escape only invited death by asphyxiation or sea monsters, and God help you if you somehow survive.
I don't think the process for abandoning hope can be learned from external sources. I believe one can become aware that such a thing is possible, and maybe even ken the need of it before they actually attempt to let it happen. For me, it was a little like having to feel good about falling out of my bed while I was dreaming at night.
I'm sure I actually fell out of bed and was rudely awakened by a hard floor a few times, but in the latter stages of my matriculation into learning to control my dreaming, I would wake up at the last moment and realize that I was merely dreaming, and not physically falling off my bed on to a hard, cold floor at all.
I didn't set out to learn how to adjust to and restrain my unreal fears from eviscerating my mental state, it happened over time so I could get some sleep. I had to get up by myself before everybody else in the family and go down to the barn and milk the cows for a long time.
Learning to boss around and exploit huge dairy animals mano y mano by myself before I weighed a hundred pounds was a powerful incentive to figure out I wasn't really falling out of bed and ruining my sleep, and let myself fall into the cosmic soup with aplomb. I got real good at it. I thought it was to die for. Nobody knows. I haver never been able to convince a single person alive that I was right but for-me.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Reframing The Quilt
_
Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he 'lives' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. - Gurdjieff
http://koti.mbnet.fi/amoira/1relig.htm
I don't know anything about this web site I'm linking. It just showed up in a web search when i was looking for a source to link a Jung quote I like to. I'm not affiliated with the web site in any way I'm aware of. It's just easy for people to find the quotes I use here. I don't know if the quotes are exact either. Whoever is posting them on this site might be as careless about preciseness in this regard as I am is.
I don't know exactly when I began to read Gurdjieff. At least two-thirds of my life ago. Whenever it was and however it was I at least remember Gurdjieff's name more so than the people who wrote about him. I remember that I read more about him than by him.
From what I've read, the source material he based his work on came from an ancient Sufi database that may have since been lost. Lots of researchers claims to have looked for it at least half a century, even since the arrival of the WWW, and nobody can find an original source. The way I understand it presently is that his real body of whatever has been mostly preserved in the Ennegrams, an oracle, and another esoteric system for thinking about things that I respect and have used in the past. It's dependable for furnishing one with something intelligent sounding to say if the occasion demands it. What else does one need an oracle or system for thinking about things for?
In the quickly fading e-mail discussion group I participate in there was some talk about the meaning associated with the numbers 3 and 4 in the early Christian writings. Specifically, the Gospel of Thomas or other documents in the Gnostic library discovered in Eygpt. I don't usually follow or participate in the numbers games some people play. I like words. It's in a situation like this that some expertise in oracles and system thinking can fill the gap of interest with a hopefully interesting remark.
This morning I woke up pondering this 3 and 4 discussion and realized these numbers are directly related to a system of thinking within astrology that I actively studied for twenty years or so. I didn't study one particular system of astrology, mostly the sidereal type if I remember. It's been probably twenty more years since I've been actively engaged in developing it further using external sources.I know for sure I haven't drawn up a natal chart in twenty years. I don't have to anymore. I just know.
There are Earth, Air, Water, and Fire signs. That's the 4. Each of the 4 has 3 signs that are pigeon-holed in the same grouping. 4 X 3 = 12. There are 12 astrology signs. The four groupings are divided into Cardinal signs; Fixed signs; and Mutable signs. The first of each 4 grouping is always a Cardinal sign. The Cardinal sign is always followed by the Fixed sign of a particular grouping of four. The Fixed sign is followed by the Mutable sign of that grouping. This is the initial group: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer.
Aries is a Cardinal sign and a Fire sign. Taurus is a Fixed sign and an Earth sign, Gemini is a Mutable sign and an Air sign, and then to the next group of 3, where Cancer is the Cardinal sign, but is also a Water sign along with Scorpio and Pisces; which in turn are Fixed and Mutable signs.
Besides that, each sign is divided into decans of 10 degrees each. This is another grouping of 3, because each sign has 30 degrees in it.
I only got one point in writing this stuff out. I could write continuously for fonger than you could stay focused and/or stay awake. This system of thinking is the mother-lode of all homo sapiens possibilities. The digital technology will simply be integrated in to the next update. It gives me something to say, especially when any ol' thing will do. That's like for eternity.
This could be a secret. The secret of all secrets. But, none of that matters. Something is needed to comprehend it that can't be gained by studying or the difficulty or complexity of the learning curve. Unfortunately for some, it's an unearned, undeserved gift from a source that can't be swayed by love or money. That's tough, because for many people that's all they got to offer.
The purported secret IS.. TaTa.. a much more universal experiential database must be revealed to consciousness that can make the necessary apperceptions of all One's past data to come up with something really unique to say that captures the moment and swerves the curve around into infinity.
GONE AWAY
A vocational reflection
concerning the issues
delaying the progress
of recalling perfection
of childhood direction
presuming it's nature,
and reborn to alliance
with Me.
fmp ~ October, 1971 (Edited today.)
_
Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he 'lives' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. - Gurdjieff
http://koti.mbnet.fi/amoira/1relig.htm
I don't know anything about this web site I'm linking. It just showed up in a web search when i was looking for a source to link a Jung quote I like to. I'm not affiliated with the web site in any way I'm aware of. It's just easy for people to find the quotes I use here. I don't know if the quotes are exact either. Whoever is posting them on this site might be as careless about preciseness in this regard as I am is.
I don't know exactly when I began to read Gurdjieff. At least two-thirds of my life ago. Whenever it was and however it was I at least remember Gurdjieff's name more so than the people who wrote about him. I remember that I read more about him than by him.
From what I've read, the source material he based his work on came from an ancient Sufi database that may have since been lost. Lots of researchers claims to have looked for it at least half a century, even since the arrival of the WWW, and nobody can find an original source. The way I understand it presently is that his real body of whatever has been mostly preserved in the Ennegrams, an oracle, and another esoteric system for thinking about things that I respect and have used in the past. It's dependable for furnishing one with something intelligent sounding to say if the occasion demands it. What else does one need an oracle or system for thinking about things for?
In the quickly fading e-mail discussion group I participate in there was some talk about the meaning associated with the numbers 3 and 4 in the early Christian writings. Specifically, the Gospel of Thomas or other documents in the Gnostic library discovered in Eygpt. I don't usually follow or participate in the numbers games some people play. I like words. It's in a situation like this that some expertise in oracles and system thinking can fill the gap of interest with a hopefully interesting remark.
This morning I woke up pondering this 3 and 4 discussion and realized these numbers are directly related to a system of thinking within astrology that I actively studied for twenty years or so. I didn't study one particular system of astrology, mostly the sidereal type if I remember. It's been probably twenty more years since I've been actively engaged in developing it further using external sources.I know for sure I haven't drawn up a natal chart in twenty years. I don't have to anymore. I just know.
There are Earth, Air, Water, and Fire signs. That's the 4. Each of the 4 has 3 signs that are pigeon-holed in the same grouping. 4 X 3 = 12. There are 12 astrology signs. The four groupings are divided into Cardinal signs; Fixed signs; and Mutable signs. The first of each 4 grouping is always a Cardinal sign. The Cardinal sign is always followed by the Fixed sign of a particular grouping of four. The Fixed sign is followed by the Mutable sign of that grouping. This is the initial group: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer.
Aries is a Cardinal sign and a Fire sign. Taurus is a Fixed sign and an Earth sign, Gemini is a Mutable sign and an Air sign, and then to the next group of 3, where Cancer is the Cardinal sign, but is also a Water sign along with Scorpio and Pisces; which in turn are Fixed and Mutable signs.
Besides that, each sign is divided into decans of 10 degrees each. This is another grouping of 3, because each sign has 30 degrees in it.
I only got one point in writing this stuff out. I could write continuously for fonger than you could stay focused and/or stay awake. This system of thinking is the mother-lode of all homo sapiens possibilities. The digital technology will simply be integrated in to the next update. It gives me something to say, especially when any ol' thing will do. That's like for eternity.
This could be a secret. The secret of all secrets. But, none of that matters. Something is needed to comprehend it that can't be gained by studying or the difficulty or complexity of the learning curve. Unfortunately for some, it's an unearned, undeserved gift from a source that can't be swayed by love or money. That's tough, because for many people that's all they got to offer.
The purported secret IS.. TaTa.. a much more universal experiential database must be revealed to consciousness that can make the necessary apperceptions of all One's past data to come up with something really unique to say that captures the moment and swerves the curve around into infinity.
GONE AWAY
A vocational reflection
concerning the issues
delaying the progress
of recalling perfection
of childhood direction
presuming it's nature,
and reborn to alliance
with Me.
fmp ~ October, 1971 (Edited today.)
_
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
A Splendiferous Insight
In response to an e-mail post:
"I notice you like to use the term "craft" to describe what you've done to address your beliefs (or not). Is there a particular reason you chose this term? Did you have to work at what you currently consider your outlook on religion to be? Why would it be considered "business" if they adopted your outlook?"
I wrote this comment and asked these questions on the spur of the moment. I had hoped they would engage the writer in such a way as to cause him to question his own motives, but his response seemed to ponder if I intended to insult him instead. The goal of this particular quest is to discover whether or not it's actually true that what one occupies their time with most fervently, most pedantically, most frenetically, most persistently, most desperately... is their real religion. I don't know whether this is a well-formed question or is there is a better one.
i seem to be arriving at the conclusion that what one does with their ti-me most fervently IS their religion. No matter whether their obsessed behavior is acceptable to the large majority of their neighbors or not. I don't even know how to argue this as a moot question. I'm fishing for ideas about this topic simply by writing what I'm writing right now. What's next?
Again, I'm writing with the Jung quote on religion in the back of my mind, while I try to bring related data to the foreground. I went searching for the correct quote to link it here, but I haven't found a site with the quote easy to find on the page to link to. I'll work on it. Meanwhile, I found this quote at this site that's easy to find because it's the third paragraph on the page:
"The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him... it is sometimes so heavy a burden that he is fated to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."
http://koti.mbnet.fi/amoira/fatejng1.htm
Jung seems to be saying something equivalent to what I've been chirping lately, that deciding to play God with our own lives means that we must accept responsibility for what happens when we might not quite be up to the task. On the other hand, I don't seem as convinced as I might need to be that instead of choosing to play God with my own life, that I was chosen, and probably damned by the choice (however made) to "sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."
I certainly would not have asked my children to voluntarily condemn themselves to such a fate. I refused to allow them to use me as a model for their lives by simply not being there for them after they were taken away to California by my ex-wife. They detest me for it. No blame. As one of the chosen I had no choice but to act in their favor despite the results my action elicited. There is no blame for them, and any blame there is, is mine.
I think I have successfully refilled my prescriptions at the VA Hospital pharmacy via the internet for the first time. i guess I'll know I did right when they show up at my house. I tried to do it before, but apparently anticipated having a difficult time making it happen, and thus, it didn't. I kept looking for the forms I saw on the documentation, and when they didn't show up I got confused and quit.
This morning I went back to the Refill page and the checkboxes I needed to click were right out in the open with instructions at the top of the column to check the medications I wanted to refill. I checked 'em, clicked on the Submit Refills button at the bottom of the column, and it was a done deal.
This is the best way for all concerned to get refills done with the least fuss. I can readily see where I'm at with all my prescriptions, and how many refills I've got left at the same place the medical staff looks. This is probably already a worn out phrase, but appropriate still. We're literally all on the same page.
I asked this guy I like some hard questions. If I didn't like him I wouldn't have bothered. I asked him these questions knowing before hand that he would have to read what appeared before him as if he had composed the question I asked.
As a human, if the/a question is asked, the psyche will provide an answer consciously heard or no. With the question being: Will the answer provided be to the question I composed or the one my reader transformed by interpretation into their own question of Self, and how will my respondent treat the answer he provided to what he thought he would be asking if he were me?
It's my opinion that he will treat the answer he provided to what he would have been asking if he had used the same words I did, and claim it was his answer to my question. On the contrary, if he treats his answer as his genie's response to his interpretation of what he would have been asking himself with disrespect (although intending his scorn for me), he'll probably accuse me of disrespecting him despite my lack of intent to cause that response in him. In any case, there's been no response at all nor is there likely to be.
"I notice you like to use the term "craft" to describe what you've done to address your beliefs (or not). Is there a particular reason you chose this term? Did you have to work at what you currently consider your outlook on religion to be? Why would it be considered "business" if they adopted your outlook?"
I wrote this comment and asked these questions on the spur of the moment. I had hoped they would engage the writer in such a way as to cause him to question his own motives, but his response seemed to ponder if I intended to insult him instead. The goal of this particular quest is to discover whether or not it's actually true that what one occupies their time with most fervently, most pedantically, most frenetically, most persistently, most desperately... is their real religion. I don't know whether this is a well-formed question or is there is a better one.
i seem to be arriving at the conclusion that what one does with their ti-me most fervently IS their religion. No matter whether their obsessed behavior is acceptable to the large majority of their neighbors or not. I don't even know how to argue this as a moot question. I'm fishing for ideas about this topic simply by writing what I'm writing right now. What's next?
Again, I'm writing with the Jung quote on religion in the back of my mind, while I try to bring related data to the foreground. I went searching for the correct quote to link it here, but I haven't found a site with the quote easy to find on the page to link to. I'll work on it. Meanwhile, I found this quote at this site that's easy to find because it's the third paragraph on the page:
"The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him... it is sometimes so heavy a burden that he is fated to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."
http://koti.mbnet.fi/amoira/fatejng1.htm
Jung seems to be saying something equivalent to what I've been chirping lately, that deciding to play God with our own lives means that we must accept responsibility for what happens when we might not quite be up to the task. On the other hand, I don't seem as convinced as I might need to be that instead of choosing to play God with my own life, that I was chosen, and probably damned by the choice (however made) to "sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."
I certainly would not have asked my children to voluntarily condemn themselves to such a fate. I refused to allow them to use me as a model for their lives by simply not being there for them after they were taken away to California by my ex-wife. They detest me for it. No blame. As one of the chosen I had no choice but to act in their favor despite the results my action elicited. There is no blame for them, and any blame there is, is mine.
I think I have successfully refilled my prescriptions at the VA Hospital pharmacy via the internet for the first time. i guess I'll know I did right when they show up at my house. I tried to do it before, but apparently anticipated having a difficult time making it happen, and thus, it didn't. I kept looking for the forms I saw on the documentation, and when they didn't show up I got confused and quit.
This morning I went back to the Refill page and the checkboxes I needed to click were right out in the open with instructions at the top of the column to check the medications I wanted to refill. I checked 'em, clicked on the Submit Refills button at the bottom of the column, and it was a done deal.
This is the best way for all concerned to get refills done with the least fuss. I can readily see where I'm at with all my prescriptions, and how many refills I've got left at the same place the medical staff looks. This is probably already a worn out phrase, but appropriate still. We're literally all on the same page.
I asked this guy I like some hard questions. If I didn't like him I wouldn't have bothered. I asked him these questions knowing before hand that he would have to read what appeared before him as if he had composed the question I asked.
As a human, if the/a question is asked, the psyche will provide an answer consciously heard or no. With the question being: Will the answer provided be to the question I composed or the one my reader transformed by interpretation into their own question of Self, and how will my respondent treat the answer he provided to what he thought he would be asking if he were me?
It's my opinion that he will treat the answer he provided to what he would have been asking if he had used the same words I did, and claim it was his answer to my question. On the contrary, if he treats his answer as his genie's response to his interpretation of what he would have been asking himself with disrespect (although intending his scorn for me), he'll probably accuse me of disrespecting him despite my lack of intent to cause that response in him. In any case, there's been no response at all nor is there likely to be.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Avian Flyways Of North America
The steroids I started in on Saturday are beginning to loosen things up, and I know i should be using this strength and flexibility to do some work on getting the flooring down upstairs so I can move my bed back into that room. Obviously, if I'm still sitting here writing instead of going upstairs and getting to it, I'm not making any progress.
Sometime when I reach a stopping point I raise my head and gaze out the window as a way of refocusing my attention for a while. It's different out there today and for the last few days, in regard to the final leaves falling off the deciduous trees just outside. It's rained for the past two days, and when I looked outside and saw the leaves falling, I concluded that it was because they had gotten wet from the rain, and the added weight of the water was the final straw for the autumn leaves act.
Today, however, with the warm front gone with the rain, and the sky brilliantly blue again, the leaves are still falling, and I think it's because of the high winds bringing in the cold front. In any case, the tree skeletons will be imminently visible again, and the vegetation brown-out will be complete. I can easily see the pond down the slope through the underbrush I chopped out last year.
It is psychologically comforting to me to be able to see the light reflected off the pond surface all year long. The sun sets behind some part of it all four seasons. During the summer the sun sets over the pond, but there is some woods that stop the pond from reflecting the final stages where the colors get vivid. Presently the sun sets far enough south that the final fading light of sunset on the clear nights bounces off the pond directly through the windows I'm looking out of.
If there is anything I miss about working it's the sights I'd see to and from work all through the year. One of my favorite areas to have this happen was my first job as a welder at the big shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It's located, naturally, at the mouth of the Pascagoula River, and in miniature, just like Biloxi River west of it just down the road, and Mobile River east of it just down the road, the Pascagoula River had carved out a bay for itself where it entered the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike those adjoining rivers, the bay of the Pascagoula River was pretty much filled up with sand, and negotiating it by boat was haphazardous.
To return to how I like to watch how the seasons and the weather they bring act on an artifact of nature, driving back and forth across the long part of Pascagoula bay and the bridges was just wonderful. Sometimes it would still be dark when I went to work, and still have plenty of light on the drive back home. Other times it would be light on the way to work and I would drive home in darkness. The equinox seasons were more evenly divided between night and day. There was fog to content with that might be wispy on the land side, but when the bridge that took you out into the openness of Pascagoula Bay it was like hitting a tidal wave that covered everything up, and I could only see the tail lights of the closest cars to me.
The bird life in this area and the variety of it throughout the year was such that it couldn't be ignored even by the most jaded traveler. I don't think it could compete with the huge flyway up and down the Texas gulf coast, but there was still a huge variety of birds to see just driving back and forth to work.
I never thought to buy a bird identification book during that era of my life. I was too used to having to carry everything I owned with my body like some pack mule, and a bird identification book would have been just so much baggage I'd tote around if I was a stupid lout. My youngest brother had no such phobias ruling his life, and when we worked together in Galveston, Texas, he bought one of those books right away. We almost come to blows reaching for it. I was so intrigued by identifying the crazy number of different kinds of birds there, I vowed to never be without a bird book again. I'm gonna buy one soon. It won't be long. You just wait...
I could move to the coastal plains of East Texas and feel right at home with the physical layout. I'd miss the trees. The trees they cut in East Texas to build the houses in the old West didn't come back like they do here because of the lack of yearly rainfall. They depend on tropical storms and hurricanes for their water supply even more critically than here.
If there were one single factor that would move me to the coastal plains of Texas it would be the activity of the bird life up and down that flyway. They probably carry some weird freaking bird flu from South America and back. In that way they're a little like the brightly-colored butterflies and exotic frogs. The more attractive and startling their color patterns, the more deadly their poison. I haven't thought about that part of working in Texas in a long time. There are worse things I could waste my time with than looking at birds.
Sometime when I reach a stopping point I raise my head and gaze out the window as a way of refocusing my attention for a while. It's different out there today and for the last few days, in regard to the final leaves falling off the deciduous trees just outside. It's rained for the past two days, and when I looked outside and saw the leaves falling, I concluded that it was because they had gotten wet from the rain, and the added weight of the water was the final straw for the autumn leaves act.
Today, however, with the warm front gone with the rain, and the sky brilliantly blue again, the leaves are still falling, and I think it's because of the high winds bringing in the cold front. In any case, the tree skeletons will be imminently visible again, and the vegetation brown-out will be complete. I can easily see the pond down the slope through the underbrush I chopped out last year.
It is psychologically comforting to me to be able to see the light reflected off the pond surface all year long. The sun sets behind some part of it all four seasons. During the summer the sun sets over the pond, but there is some woods that stop the pond from reflecting the final stages where the colors get vivid. Presently the sun sets far enough south that the final fading light of sunset on the clear nights bounces off the pond directly through the windows I'm looking out of.
If there is anything I miss about working it's the sights I'd see to and from work all through the year. One of my favorite areas to have this happen was my first job as a welder at the big shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It's located, naturally, at the mouth of the Pascagoula River, and in miniature, just like Biloxi River west of it just down the road, and Mobile River east of it just down the road, the Pascagoula River had carved out a bay for itself where it entered the Gulf of Mexico. Unlike those adjoining rivers, the bay of the Pascagoula River was pretty much filled up with sand, and negotiating it by boat was haphazardous.
To return to how I like to watch how the seasons and the weather they bring act on an artifact of nature, driving back and forth across the long part of Pascagoula bay and the bridges was just wonderful. Sometimes it would still be dark when I went to work, and still have plenty of light on the drive back home. Other times it would be light on the way to work and I would drive home in darkness. The equinox seasons were more evenly divided between night and day. There was fog to content with that might be wispy on the land side, but when the bridge that took you out into the openness of Pascagoula Bay it was like hitting a tidal wave that covered everything up, and I could only see the tail lights of the closest cars to me.
The bird life in this area and the variety of it throughout the year was such that it couldn't be ignored even by the most jaded traveler. I don't think it could compete with the huge flyway up and down the Texas gulf coast, but there was still a huge variety of birds to see just driving back and forth to work.
I never thought to buy a bird identification book during that era of my life. I was too used to having to carry everything I owned with my body like some pack mule, and a bird identification book would have been just so much baggage I'd tote around if I was a stupid lout. My youngest brother had no such phobias ruling his life, and when we worked together in Galveston, Texas, he bought one of those books right away. We almost come to blows reaching for it. I was so intrigued by identifying the crazy number of different kinds of birds there, I vowed to never be without a bird book again. I'm gonna buy one soon. It won't be long. You just wait...
I could move to the coastal plains of East Texas and feel right at home with the physical layout. I'd miss the trees. The trees they cut in East Texas to build the houses in the old West didn't come back like they do here because of the lack of yearly rainfall. They depend on tropical storms and hurricanes for their water supply even more critically than here.
If there were one single factor that would move me to the coastal plains of Texas it would be the activity of the bird life up and down that flyway. They probably carry some weird freaking bird flu from South America and back. In that way they're a little like the brightly-colored butterflies and exotic frogs. The more attractive and startling their color patterns, the more deadly their poison. I haven't thought about that part of working in Texas in a long time. There are worse things I could waste my time with than looking at birds.
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