quotes

[inavalan]

Dec 31, 2023 23:30:29 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Dec 31, 2023 0:11:59 GMT -5 inavalan said:

Would you care to comment on what you got from that quote? I assume there was something that made you share it.

"We are possessed by the idea of one" (ego) doesn't really say anything.

Dec 31, 2023 1:31:00 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Sure, it's from the book "Ask The Awakened - The Negative Way", Chapter 31:

If you can get your hands on this book, or any book from Wei Wu Wei, read it! I would consider his books as a bit too highbrow for this forum, but I think his books could help you understand what we are talking about here. Wei Wu Wei basically does what Shankara and Nagarjuna and Laozi did. They all created treatises on the ultimate truth which is advaita/non-duality. Nagarjuna did it in Buddhist lingo, Shankara in Vedanta lingo, Laozi in Daoist lingo, and Wei Wu Wei did it in western philosophy lingo. So his books are specifically for the western reader who has little to no knowledge about these eastern thought systems. All that is required of the reader is no-nonsense logical thinking. He definitely does stretch the limits of language and abstract thinking, but in the end it's all rather simple, and also logically consistent. He also talks about karma, reincarnation and parallel lives - pretty much like Seth, actually - which is interesting, because they come from opposite ends but reach basically the same conclusion.

Thank you for this recommendation. I found it. I'll give it a try.

[someNOTHING!]

More story-like NDish stuff from the Nag Hammadi/Gnostics material.

+The Lord said, "Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be."

+He who has knowledge of the truth is a free man, but the free man does not sin, for "He who sins is the slave of sin" (John 8:34). Truth is the mother, knowledge the father.

+Echamoth is one thing and Echmoth, another. Echamoth is Wisdom simply, but Echmoth is the Wisdom of death, which is the one who knows death, which is called "the little Wisdom".

+Early in the text it says: "Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing." Later in the text it says: "Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error – for He rose up first and then died."

+Jesus came to crucify the world.


~from the Gospel of Philip

[andrew]

[inavalan]

“One must cease to look; it is necessary, closing one’s eyes, to change this way of seeing by another one and to wake up this faculty that everyone possesses but that very few use.” — PLOTINUS

[someNOTHING!]

Jan 6, 2024 3:55:50 GMT -5 inavalan said:

“One must cease to look; it is necessary, closing one’s eyes, to change this way of seeing by another one and to wake up this faculty that everyone possesses but that very few use.” — PLOTINUS

It's an interesting quote that has a nuanced feel to it with respect to being open to a greater faculty of awareness, yeah? I have not read into the Enneads enough to have a fuller understanding of his outlook or to what he ultimately pointed, but he does have some nice potential. He was a bit of a Stoic, took care of a house full of children who evidently thought he was cool, pissed off more than a few local scholars, and (when told that the gods may not approve of something he said) flippantly said, 'Just tell the gods to come see me.'

If curious, I recently found this Belgian guy who did a nice job of filling out some of the subtleties that exhibit something of a ND take. So, what caught my eye at first got reinforced. To get into the weeds of his thought with him would have been cool, I reckon. He probably would have fit in quite well here on the board. A complete nutter by social standards.

[stardustpilgrim]

Very nice Plotinus video sN. It pretty-much explains sdp. Plotinus was a great, great, great...n...great granddaddy, most likely. I've heard of Proclus (I think that's the other guy the video-guy mentioned) but never seen a diagram of his 'chain of being'. It sounds very comparable to Gurdjieff's ray of creation and description of dimensions.

I would not doubt it that the school of Plotinus was the 4th Way of that day. The way video-guy describes the not-ordered Enneads is the way Gurdjieff taught. In Search of the Miraculous was a name picked by the publisher, Ouspensky called it Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (which became the subtitle). The teaching is given in fragments, then ~you~ have to put-it-together through your own understanding. PD Ouspensky had a massive intellect, he tried to enter the teaching through the intellect (for the most part). Later, when he left Gurdjieff, he taught what he had been taught, but he called it the System. He tried to systematize the teaching.

Just a few thoughts, from my perspective, your diagram. The Absolute, the One, would be completely aware of the Whole, no separation from the perspective of the One, the emanation. A particular man, let's just call him Ted, from the bottom, begins the traverse upward (which video-guy correctly says is actually inward, not up, as in a sense of direction). But let's stick with up, for description purposes. Gurdjieff never made it clear if there is an undescended self (minute 34), he was ambiguous on the subject (because you have to find out for yourself). Traversing upward, you can't see what's above you (you can't see above your own level of being). So the One knows you, but you don't know what's above. But once you ascend to a certain level, your knowledge is always inclusive of the territory you have traversed.

Now, why don't you know what's above? Because the levels are discontinuous (I noted minute 25 here). Ted, on the level he is on, takes that to be the whole, as it is discontinuous to the level above. Each level, for example the square manifest bottom level, can be taken as zero to infinity. Then, moving upward (I noted minute 27 here), there is a gap or void. But on the level of soul, that level can be taken as zero to infinity, traversing upward, once Ted reaches the soul (level), he maintains awareness of the bottom actually rectangle level. Then, unless Ted were to know, theoretically, there was a Nous level, Ted would not know he is not-aware of the Whole, as there is again discontinuity, a void-gap, between soul and Nous, again, taken to itself, each level is zero to infinity. Repeat. Now, at the Nous level is when you find out if there is an undescended self (minute 34), or not.

At minute 28, the question of how, is via self-remembering. At minute 30, bidirectional is mentioned. Watching only once, I just noted this, I think this is the difference between emanation and transcendence (and the description of discontinuity above). At minute 32 I noted Federico Fa ggin, this seems an important point of Fa ggin. I also noted minute 33(:20), but I can't read my writing.

I dozed off a little, so missed a few seconds here and there, but otherwise watched in full.

Thanks, good stuff. I'll at least watch the Islam oriented video, and the Kabbalah oriented video.

Added (searched) note: Neoplatonism was established by Ammonius Saccas (fl. early 3rd century ce), who had been brought up as a Christian but had abandoned his religion for the study of Plato. Because Ammonius wrote nothing, his philosophy is known only through his famous disciple, Plotinus (205–270).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, I would be of the view that the Origen Plotinus knew, was the famous Origen, who had some shady ideas, for a Christian.

[someNOTHING!]

Jan 6, 2024 20:21:23 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Very nice Plotinus video sN. It pretty-much explains sdp. Plotinus was a great, great, great...n...great granddaddy, most likely. I've heard of Proclus (I think that's the other guy the video-guy mentioned) but never seen a diagram of his 'chain of being'. It sounds very comparable to Gurdjieff's ray of creation and description of dimensions.

I would not doubt it that the school of Plotinus was the 4th Way of that day. The way video-guy describes the not-ordered Enneads is the way Gurdjieff taught. In Search of the Miraculous was a name picked by the publisher, Ouspensky called it Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (which became the subtitle). The teaching is given in fragments, then ~you~ have to put-it-together through your own understanding. PD Ouspensky had a massive intellect, he tried to enter the teaching through the intellect (for the most part). Later, when he left Gurdjieff, he taught what he had been taught, but he called it the System. He tried to systematize the teaching.

Just a few thoughts, from my perspective, your diagram. The Absolute, the One, would be completely aware of the Whole, no separation from the perspective of the One, the emanation. A particular man, let's just call him Ted, from the bottom, begins the traverse upward (which video-guy correctly says is actually inward, not up, as in a sense of direction). But let's stick with up, for description purposes. Gurdjieff never made it clear if there is an undescended self (minute 34), he was ambiguous on the subject (because you have to find out for yourself). Traversing upward, you can't see what's above you (you can't see above your own level of being). So the One knows you, but you don't know what's above. But once you ascend to a certain level, your knowledge is always inclusive of the territory you have traversed.

Now, why don't you know what's above? Because the levels are discontinuous (I noted minute 25 here). Ted, on the level he is on, takes that to be the whole, as it is discontinuous to the level above. Each level, for example the square manifest bottom level, can be taken as zero to infinity. Then, moving upward (I noted minute 27 here), there is a gap or void. But on the level of soul, that level can be taken as zero to infinity, traversing upward, once Ted reaches the soul (level), he maintains awareness of the bottom actually rectangle level. Then, unless Ted were to know, theoretically, there was a Nous level, Ted would not know he is not-aware of the Whole, as there is again discontinuity, a void-gap, between soul and Nous, again, taken to itself, each level is zero to infinity. Repeat. Now, at the Nous level is when you find out if there is an undescended self (minute 34), or not.

At minute 28, the question of how, is via self-remembering. At minute 30, bidirectional is mentioned. Watching only once, I just noted this, I think this is the difference between emanation and transcendence (and the description of discontinuity above). At minute 32 I noted Federico Fa ggin, this seems an important point of Fa ggin. I also noted minute 33(:20), but I can't read my writing.

I dozed off a little, so missed a few seconds here and there, but otherwise watched in full.

Thanks, good stuff. I'll at least watch the Islam oriented video, and the Kabbalah oriented video.

Added (searched) note: Neoplatonism was established by Ammonius Saccas (fl. early 3rd century ce), who had been brought up as a Christian but had abandoned his religion for the study of Plato. Because Ammonius wrote nothing, his philosophy is known only through his famous disciple, Plotinus (205–270).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, I would be of the view that the Origen Plotinus knew, was the famous Origen, who had some shady ideas, for a Christian.

Cool. I'm glad we seem to have found something of a common ground, or at least an object to express our understandings about. Having been in the language and culture field, I am well aware of how vocabulary, context, and meaning have to be unpacked together. Even for native speakers, the task can be quite difficult in this field of inquiry. Even the concept of 'non duality', though obvious in 'meaning', has a very strange way of bringing unconscious beliefs into the light, especially when explored or discussed as Here and Now, at least from what I can tell.

I'll have to circle back around to this and check out the time marks with your concepts. It could be a worthy exploration for anyone willing to get involved, imo.

I'll check out Saccas (sounds familiar, but I don't know much). Yes, Origen shows up in a few places with respect to Christianity. Seems like he was Egyptian, but can't remember.

I'm out. Peacely~~

[inavalan]

Jan 6, 2024 3:55:50 GMT -5 inavalan said:

“One must cease to look; it is necessary, closing one’s eyes, to change this way of seeing by another one and to wake up this faculty that everyone possesses but that very few use.” — PLOTINUS

This is the context of the above quote, in a different translation:

• §1.6.8. ...
  Someone would be better advised to say: ‘let us flee to our beloved fatherland’. But what is this flight, and how is it accomplished? Let us set sail in the way Homer, in an allegorical way, I think, tells us that Odysseus fled from the sorceress Circe or from Calypso.
  Odysseus was not satisfied to remain there, even though he had visual pleasures and passed his time with sensual beauty. Our fatherland, from where we have actually come, and our father are both in the intelligible world. What is our course and what is our means of flight? We should not rely on our feet to get us there, for our feet just take us everywhere on earth, one place after another. Nor should you saddle up a horse or prepare some sea-going vessel. You should put aside all such things and stop looking; just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up. Everyone has this ability, but few use it.
  
  §1.6.9. What, then, is that inner way of looking? Having just awakened, the soul is not yet able to look at the bright objects before it. The soul must first be accustomed to look at beautiful practices, next beautiful works – not those works that the crafts produce, but those that men who are called ‘good’ produce – next, to look at the soul of those who produce these beautiful works. How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that a good soul has?
  Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you, until you see ‘Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat’.
  ...
  
  

[stardustpilgrim]

Jan 6, 2024 23:19:53 GMT -5 someNOTHING! said:

Jan 6, 2024 20:21:23 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Very nice Plotinus video sN. It pretty-much explains sdp. Plotinus was a great, great, great...n...great granddaddy, most likely. I've heard of Proclus (I think that's the other guy the video-guy mentioned) but never seen a diagram of his 'chain of being'. It sounds very comparable to Gurdjieff's ray of creation and description of dimensions.

I would not doubt it that the school of Plotinus was the 4th Way of that day. The way video-guy describes the not-ordered Enneads is the way Gurdjieff taught. In Search of the Miraculous was a name picked by the publisher, Ouspensky called it Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (which became the subtitle). The teaching is given in fragments, then ~you~ have to put-it-together through your own understanding. PD Ouspensky had a massive intellect, he tried to enter the teaching through the intellect (for the most part). Later, when he left Gurdjieff, he taught what he had been taught, but he called it the System. He tried to systematize the teaching.

Just a few thoughts, from my perspective, your diagram. The Absolute, the One, would be completely aware of the Whole, no separation from the perspective of the One, the emanation. A particular man, let's just call him Ted, from the bottom, begins the traverse upward (which video-guy correctly says is actually inward, not up, as in a sense of direction). But let's stick with up, for description purposes. Gurdjieff never made it clear if there is an undescended self (minute 34), he was ambiguous on the subject (because you have to find out for yourself). Traversing upward, you can't see what's above you (you can't see above your own level of being). So the One knows you, but you don't know what's above. But once you ascend to a certain level, your knowledge is always inclusive of the territory you have traversed.

Now, why don't you know what's above? Because the levels are discontinuous (I noted minute 25 here). Ted, on the level he is on, takes that to be the whole, as it is discontinuous to the level above. Each level, for example the square manifest bottom level, can be taken as zero to infinity. Then, moving upward (I noted minute 27 here), there is a gap or void. But on the level of soul, that level can be taken as zero to infinity, traversing upward, once Ted reaches the soul (level), he maintains awareness of the bottom actually rectangle level. Then, unless Ted were to know, theoretically, there was a Nous level, Ted would not know he is not-aware of the Whole, as there is again discontinuity, a void-gap, between soul and Nous, again, taken to itself, each level is zero to infinity. Repeat. Now, at the Nous level is when you find out if there is an undescended self (minute 34), or not.

At minute 28, the question of how, is via self-remembering. At minute 30, bidirectional is mentioned. Watching only once, I just noted this, I think this is the difference between emanation and transcendence (and the description of discontinuity above). At minute 32 I noted Federico Fa ggin, this seems an important point of Fa ggin. I also noted minute 33(:20), but I can't read my writing.

I dozed off a little, so missed a few seconds here and there, but otherwise watched in full.

Thanks, good stuff. I'll at least watch the Islam oriented video, and the Kabbalah oriented video.

Added (searched) note: Neoplatonism was established by Ammonius Saccas (fl. early 3rd century ce), who had been brought up as a Christian but had abandoned his religion for the study of Plato. Because Ammonius wrote nothing, his philosophy is known only through his famous disciple, Plotinus (205–270).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, I would be of the view that the Origen Plotinus knew, was the famous Origen, who had some shady ideas, for a Christian.

Cool. I'm glad we seem to have found something of a common ground, or at least an object to express our understandings about. Having been in the language and culture field, I am well aware of how vocabulary, context, and meaning have to be unpacked together. Even for native speakers, the task can be quite difficult in this field of inquiry. Even the concept of 'non duality', though obvious in 'meaning', has a very strange way of bringing unconscious beliefs into the light, especially when explored or discussed as Here and Now, at least from what I can tell.

I'll have to circle back around to this and check out the time marks with your concepts. It could be a worthy exploration for anyone willing to get involved, imo.

I'll check out Saccas (sounds familiar, but I don't know much). Yes, Origen shows up in a few places with respect to Christianity. Seems like he was Egyptian, but can't remember.

I'm out. Peacely~~

I looked up Ammonius (Saccas) because I recalled he was a Christian. Christianity put on the garb of Platonism in the early centuries (via the Early Church Fathers, as they were called, they're the ones who tried to stomp out Gnosticism), in that, it took a wrong turn ImvHO, should have stuck to Judaism as its roots. But Plotinus seemed to have gone a bridge too far, for Christians, so I was curious of the Ammonius-Christian link, he being the teacher of Plotinus. The quote I found, copied, explained that. Seems Ammonius and sdp were pretty-much in the same boat. I am a Christian today, but not without qualification. (It took me about 15 years, moving away from Christianity, to come back and understand Jesus. The early church basically got away from what Jesus taught, and followed Paul in the explaining the resurrection business). To Christians (my family, not my kids...) I would be a heretic if I fully explained. I do when I'm asked, I don't get asked much these days. But I am surprised a lot too, with more-I get thats-than I would have expected. One example, when I explained (it happened to come up, one Christmas) why Augustine's concept of original sin is not in the Bible, they all agreed. It's nonsense, but I was taught it as a kid almost every Sunday from the pulpit ("We are all born sinners", Jesus taught the opposite, blessed are the little children, for those in the kingdom are like little children). But the whole Western society/culture is based on, 'we are all born as sinners', Calvin and Augustine. ...The Catholics always said, give me a kid the first six years of their life, and we have them for life. Not too far from the truth, as concerning the small s self (which we aren't, for the record).

Your video guy mentions Ammonius.

[stardustpilgrim]

Jan 6, 2024 20:21:23 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

Very nice Plotinus video sN. It pretty-much explains sdp. Plotinus was a great, great, great...n...great granddaddy, most likely. I've heard of Proclus (I think that's the other guy the video-guy mentioned) but never seen a diagram of his 'chain of being'. It sounds very comparable to Gurdjieff's ray of creation and description of dimensions.

I would not doubt it that the school of Plotinus was the 4th Way of that day. The way video-guy describes the not-ordered Enneads is the way Gurdjieff taught. In Search of the Miraculous was a name picked by the publisher, Ouspensky called it Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (which became the subtitle). The teaching is given in fragments, then ~you~ have to put-it-together through your own understanding. PD Ouspensky had a massive intellect, he tried to enter the teaching through the intellect (for the most part). Later, when he left Gurdjieff, he taught what he had been taught, but he called it the System. He tried to systematize the teaching.

Just a few thoughts, from my perspective, your diagram. The Absolute, the One, would be completely aware of the Whole, no separation from the perspective of the One, the emanation. A particular man, let's just call him Ted, from the bottom, begins the traverse upward (which video-guy correctly says is actually inward, not up, as in a sense of direction). But let's stick with up, for description purposes. Gurdjieff never made it clear if there is an undescended self (minute 34), he was ambiguous on the subject (because you have to find out for yourself). Traversing upward, you can't see what's above you (you can't see above your own level of being). So the One knows you, but you don't know what's above. But once you ascend to a certain level, your knowledge is always inclusive of the territory you have traversed.

Now, why don't you know what's above? Because the levels are discontinuous (I noted minute 25 here). Ted, on the level he is on, takes that to be the whole, as it is discontinuous to the level above. Each level, for example the square manifest bottom level, can be taken as zero to infinity. Then, moving upward (I noted minute 27 here), there is a gap or void. But on the level of soul, that level can be taken as zero to infinity, traversing upward, once Ted reaches the soul (level), he maintains awareness of the bottom actually rectangle level. Then, unless Ted were to know, theoretically, there was a Nous level, Ted would not know he is not-aware of the Whole, as there is again discontinuity, a void-gap, between soul and Nous, again, taken to itself, each level is zero to infinity. Repeat. Now, at the Nous level is when you find out if there is an undescended self (minute 34), or not.

At minute 28, the question of how, is via self-remembering. At minute 30, bidirectional is mentioned. Watching only once, I just noted this, I think this is the difference between emanation and transcendence (and the description of discontinuity above). At minute 32 I noted Federico Fa ggin, this seems an important point of Fa ggin. I also noted minute 33(:20), but I can't read my writing.

I dozed off a little, so missed a few seconds here and there, but otherwise watched in full.

Thanks, good stuff. I'll at least watch the Islam oriented video, and the Kabbalah oriented video.

Added (searched) note: Neoplatonism was established by Ammonius Saccas (fl. early 3rd century ce), who had been brought up as a Christian but had abandoned his religion for the study of Plato. Because Ammonius wrote nothing, his philosophy is known only through his famous disciple, Plotinus (205–270).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, I would be of the view that the Origen Plotinus knew, was the famous Origen, who had some shady ideas, for a Christian.

Oh, just to edit, my current avatar is basically Gurdjieff's version of the Plotinus model, it would be a "Proclus" version of Plotinus' model. 8 divisions, which is an octave back to do, do-to-do is an octave (and each note of the octave has an inner octave, so 8 x 8 = 64 inner octaves, or sub-planes). Number them 1-8. Divide 1 by 7, you get a repeating number. The curving line shows the path of the repeating numbers. I've only seen this diagram in one particular place. 1 down to 8 is a descending octave (emanation). The diagram shows the way up is the way down, 8 back to 1 is an ascending octave, transcendence. In the Kabbalah Tree of Life you have the same explicated. There is a central column (sattva, balancing force), a left column (Tamas, negative force) and a right column (Rajas, positive force) [mixing paradigms]. This is also repeated in the medical sign, the Caduceus. This is also repeated in the body, ida, pingala and sushumna, the etheric nerve channels, the nadis. (8 x 8 is also where the chessboard comes from, and the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, and the 64 codons of our DNA, which is also Caduceus-like, a spiral). The avatar diagram also shows the nonlinearity of time. IOW, a lot of information can be put into a symbol.

I'm going to say, also, the right and left hemisphere of the brain have something to do with the right and left columns, the right-brain is forest-wholistic-fields, the left-brain is tree-part-particles. IOW, the right hemisphere is the access to the Whole (see Jill Bolte-Taylor & Federico Fa ggin), emanation; the left hemisphere is slow path in life, day by day, linear time cause and effect, the cultural self-small s self-(circuits), the nuts & bolts of life, the householder life.

The three-letter nature of codons means that the four nucleotides found in mRNA — A, U, G, and C — can produce a total of 64 different combinations. Of these 64 codons, 61 represent amino acids, and the remaining three represent stop signals, which trigger the end of protein synthesis.

Just chewing the cud.......

[inavalan]

The great Indian yogi, poet, and philosopher Sri Aurobindo wrote:

• “the subliminal being has also a larger direct contact with the world; it is not confined like the surface Mind to the interpretation of sense-images and sense-vibrations supplemented by the mental and vital intuition and the reason. There is indeed an inner sense in the subliminal nature, a subtle sense of vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste; but there are not confined to the creation of images of things belonging to the physical environment (…). It is the subliminal reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality’s unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being. (…) the power of the subliminal to enter into a direct contact of consciousness with other consciousness or with objects, to act without other instrumentation, by an essential sense inherent in its own substance, by a direct mental vision, by a direct feeling of things (…) but these capacities are occasional, rudimentary, vague. (…) It is only if we can open up the wall between the outer mind and the inner consciousness to which such phenomena are normal” (Aurobindo, 2001)
  

[inavalan]

The famous physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman remarked,

• “the first principle is not to fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool”.

[someNOTHING!]

Jan 7, 2024 4:59:51 GMT -5 inavalan said:

Jan 6, 2024 3:55:50 GMT -5 inavalan said:

“One must cease to look; it is necessary, closing one’s eyes, to change this way of seeing by another one and to wake up this faculty that everyone possesses but that very few use.” — PLOTINUS

This is the context of the above quote, in a different translation:

• §1.6.8. ...
  Someone would be better advised to say: ‘let us flee to our beloved fatherland’. But what is this flight, and how is it accomplished? Let us set sail in the way Homer, in an allegorical way, I think, tells us that Odysseus fled from the sorceress Circe or from Calypso.
  Odysseus was not satisfied to remain there, even though he had visual pleasures and passed his time with sensual beauty. Our fatherland, from where we have actually come, and our father are both in the intelligible world. What is our course and what is our means of flight? We should not rely on our feet to get us there, for our feet just take us everywhere on earth, one place after another. Nor should you saddle up a horse or prepare some sea-going vessel. You should put aside all such things and stop looking; just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up. Everyone has this ability, but few use it.
  
  §1.6.9. What, then, is that inner way of looking? Having just awakened, the soul is not yet able to look at the bright objects before it. The soul must first be accustomed to look at beautiful practices, next beautiful works – not those works that the crafts produce, but those that men who are called ‘good’ produce – next, to look at the soul of those who produce these beautiful works. How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that a good soul has?
  Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you, until you see ‘Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat’.
  ...
  
  

Thanks, that helps me to not have to read ALL of the Enneads, assuming that is where the quotes came from. I'm curious to see if there's an explanation of 'distinctions' between 'soul' and 'The One'. Maybe you can help me with finding any of those.

[laughter]

Jan 8, 2024 4:06:33 GMT -5 inavalan said:

The famous physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman remarked,

• “the first principle is not to fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool”.

Polonius: "but this above all: to thine own self be true, and it will surely follow, as night follows day, that you cannot be false to any man."

[stardustpilgrim]

Jan 8, 2024 8:54:51 GMT -5 someNOTHING! said:

Jan 7, 2024 4:59:51 GMT -5 inavalan said:

This is the context of the above quote, in a different translation:

• §1.6.8. ...
  Someone would be better advised to say: ‘let us flee to our beloved fatherland’. But what is this flight, and how is it accomplished? Let us set sail in the way Homer, in an allegorical way, I think, tells us that Odysseus fled from the sorceress Circe or from Calypso.
  Odysseus was not satisfied to remain there, even though he had visual pleasures and passed his time with sensual beauty. Our fatherland, from where we have actually come, and our father are both in the intelligible world. What is our course and what is our means of flight? We should not rely on our feet to get us there, for our feet just take us everywhere on earth, one place after another. Nor should you saddle up a horse or prepare some sea-going vessel. You should put aside all such things and stop looking; just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up. Everyone has this ability, but few use it.
  
  §1.6.9. What, then, is that inner way of looking? Having just awakened, the soul is not yet able to look at the bright objects before it. The soul must first be accustomed to look at beautiful practices, next beautiful works – not those works that the crafts produce, but those that men who are called ‘good’ produce – next, to look at the soul of those who produce these beautiful works. How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that a good soul has?
  Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you, until you see ‘Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat’.
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Thanks, that helps me to not have to read ALL of the Enneads, assuming that is where the quotes came from. I'm curious to see if there's an explanation of 'distinctions' between 'soul' and 'The One'. Maybe you can help me with finding any of those.

Your diagram, and the meaning of emanation. It's kind of like making tea, with the same teabag. The One is the teabag. Nous is your first cup. Then you use the same teabag, Soul is the second cup. Then you use the same teabag, the world of manifestation is the 3rd cup. That's a rough analogy.

But I am interested. I've had interest in the past, I will take a refresher course.