(A Parenthesis, just having my say)

[stardustpilgrim]

Reefs has asked me a second time to give it a rest. Just wanted to share my view before giving it a rest.

In Beelzebub's Tales Gurdjieff writes about two rivers that run parallel to each other. The general crowd of mankind is part of the river that ends up in the nether regions. But it is possible to cross from one river to the other, "into the vast spaces of the boundless ocean". "If we remain passive, submitting to the flow, we drift on and on and submit slavishly to every caprice of blind event and remain in the river that ends in the nether regions". Only by acquiring our own I do we cross from one stream to the other. Gurdjieff calls this becoming a particle of the Absolute. "The expression which has reached us from ancient times, 'the first liberation of man' ". IOW, it's not a given. Gurdjieff called this acquisition of one's own I, the making of a soul. It never just happens.

At the end of Ecclesiastes it says when you die the spirit returns to God who gave it, and the body returns to dust from which it came. Jesus talked about how man is constituted, Paul wrote about it. We are two, the old man and the new man. Jesus said that if you seek to save you-as-old-man, you will be lost (because the old man is imaginary, we are not who we think we are), but if you seek to lose your self (the old man), you will be saved (the new man). I've already given the example, Simon was the old man (the false self, the cultural self, the small s self). Jesus didn't see Simon as Simon, Jesus saw the new man, Peter. The old man is called a man born of woman. John the Baptist represented the old man. Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest man born of woman, but he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist.

Jesus talked to Nicodemus about being born again, or born from above. This is the movement from the old man to the new man. This is the very same thing discussed in Taoist alchemy, and achieving immortality. The Secret of the Golden Flower talks about the growth of the spiritual embryo, through cultivation (spiritual practice).

In Hinduism it's called being twice born. It goes all the way back to Genesis in the Bible. We read of the mysterious figure, Melchi-(the)-zedek. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, and made an offering of bread and wine. It is said that Melchizedek wasn't born and didn't die. The book Hebrews joins the OT and NT. It says Jesus was a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Back to Nicodemus. When Jesus told him he must be born again, Nicodemus was confused. So Jesus asked him, how can you be THE teacher in Israel and not know what I'm talking about? So this being born again stuff was not new to Jesus, it had been taught throughout the years in the 'school of the prophets', all the way back to Abraham and Melchizedek.

We know this from Kabbalah (which wasn't called Kabbalah until the 1200s).

But ZD is correct, there isn't a self, until there is a self. There is only an imaginary self (old man), until one is born of the spirit. Kabbalah has a complicated 'anthropology' of man. Man has three aspects, Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah (not just abstractions).

All this is also known in Sufism. It's all also known by indigenous peoples, Native Americans, Aborigines and the Hawiian Kahunas.

When you die, you will realize I am right. I will be back, whenever.....

[andrew]

My view is that you're not wrong. In fact, for me, a tremendous amount of what you say is great.

The one thing I want to say....and I'm going to preface this by saying that I am absolutely not 'against' practices (in fact, in my own way, I am 'practicing' for most of my day)....

BUT..... one cannot be 'in the now' AND also be focused on growth/practices. And being 'in the now' does matter.

There are times when one has to let go, surrender, and accept the perfection of the moment 'as it is'. Nothing to be done. Nothing to be gained. Nothing to be achieved. Just being....and doing.....in the now.

And I think, perhaps, that this is all that some folks are saying to you. That spirituality isn't JUST about growth, it's also about being who/what we are, in the absence of (the idea of) growth.

And so for me, there's a balance, and every day...every moment...is different. A time to practice, a time to surrender...I don't seem to have much say in what life is asking of me, and generally, I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I guess that's my way of saying that I like you being here, so don't stay away too long

Be well

(Nod to Tzu).

[stardustpilgrim]

Nov 18, 2024 11:36:12 GMT -5 andrew said:

My view is that you're not wrong. In fact, for me, a tremendous amount of what you say is great.

The one thing I want to say....and I'm going to preface this by saying that I am absolutely not 'against' practices (in fact, in my own way, I am 'practicing' for most of my day)....

BUT..... one cannot be 'in the now' AND also be focused on growth/practices. And being 'in the now' does matter.

There are times when one has to let go, surrender, and accept the perfection of the moment 'as it is'. Nothing to be done. Nothing to be gained. Nothing to be achieved. Just being....and doing.....in the now.

And I think, perhaps, that this is all that some folks are saying to you. That spirituality isn't JUST about growth, it's also about being who/what we are, in the absence of (the idea of) growth.

And so for me, there's a balance, and every day...every moment...is different. A time to practice, a time to surrender...I don't seem to have much say in what life is asking of me, and generally, I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I guess that's my way of saying that I like you being here, so don't stay away too long

Be well

(Nod to Tzu).

hey, I came back with a slight edit, I think you'll be OK with it (in the OP).

As to this, sure one can, that's the whole point. Dzogchen is the closest I've found to self-remembering, but there is private instruction in Tibetan Dzogchen also (stuff not written about). So I don't if it is even more accurate. I just know Gurdjieff penetrated the highest teachings wherever he went, and he spent a lot of time in Tibet. Also, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche spoke and writes about the central core of Tibetan Buddhism coming from the Sarmoung Monastery, and it being in Central Asia. Gurdjieff wrote about in Meetings With Remarkable Men finding the Sarmoung Brotherhood, their main monastery in Central Asia. I can quote both sources. I will leave my avatar with a picture from the film of Gurdjieff (the actor playing Gurdjieff) walking a narrow bridge to the monastery, it was the main advertising picture for the film. It was never told publicly where the monastery is, but some things were explicitly hinted at to me. If I recall correctly, someNOTHING has been to that country. Just a little example, but self-remembering is done with awareness. You learn new things from time to time I'm sure. What's necessary for new learning? You can explore this, but I'll help. Attention in some form is necessary. There are only two ways to get to now, either through awareness or attention. And that's what practice is about (interior practice, which is the only thing I mean by practice). Now, once you learn a new skill or task, it has gone into your muscle memory or your subconscious, it becomes automatic. Afterwards much less attention is required, sometimes, zero. But not necessarily, it is then still possible to attend-to what you are doing. So what you write is not necessarily correct.

Spirituality being who what you are, and just relaxing into that, sure, OK sometimes. My teacher said sometimes we have to read the funny-papers. But are we relaxing into the false self or the true self? If we are giving way to the false self, that accomplishes nothing, it's just prolonging sleep. Living easy and naturally and comfortably, can be merely living on autopilot, the path of least resistance. Cool synchronicity, Neo is waking up to real life for the first time, right now, I'm watching The Matrix on the SYFY channel. He just swallowed the red pill and they've found him in the battery farm. "Welcome to the real world".

I don't like sleep. When you're asleep, you never know you're asleep, that's what sleep is. But you can wake up a little, you can know 'you had been asleep'. But, also, realizing you are asleep is not the same as waking up. Of course ND and Gurdjieff use the same words but mean different things.

There is no spiritual growth for the false self, the self most people think they are. Essence is what you were born with or born as. Personality, the false self, ego, the cultural self, is what's added on to and eventually surrounds and suffocates essence. Ego consists of the contents of the centers. All self-circuit-thinking, and negative emotions, belong to the false self, they are what constitute the false self. We have to return to what-we-were as newborn babies, and begin again from there. We have to find our essence, and again live through our essence. When we are functioning through the self-circuits, our memories-as-self, self chasing life, that's living on autopilot in a state of sleep. Alan Wallace gets closer to describing the state of not-sleep. We can think we've awakened from the consensus paradigm, but if we're still living through ~our~ self-circuits, that's still living in sleep. In the ordinary circumstances of life, thoughts, feelings, actions, events, people, places, things, take your attention. That's our ordinary state, and it is a state of sleep, that's what identification is, that's what sleep is. Our self-circuits are splintered, J Krishnamurti said we are fragmented. We have thousands of crisscrossing self-circuits, no order, connected haphazardly. Gurdjieff said we have thousands of Is, but think we are one I. He called this considering we have one I, Imaginary I. The Gurdjieff teaching is about some day having one's own I, a singular unified I, something that doesn't presently exist. And that is the true individuation. It never just happens.

I ran across a very short description of rigpa (the natural state of mind/consciousness) by Alan Wallace. I'll end there.

I actually don't know what Reefs wants from me, but I'll oblige him.