I feel like that I'm standing at the edge of a subtle sublime.
In meditation today I realized myself as a little teeny tiny grain of sand. But then also I realized the sand is participating in the immense beach of an ocean, and the ocean is part of the planet and the planet of course is the solar system, and I realized a connection within all of that.
But then I felt the ocean surf pick me up and include me in its motion.
In which case I was one with the motion of the ocean, I was in the ocean participating fully but I realized that this is a different metaphor than we usually see.
There wasn't a drop of water returning to the source. There was an individual grain of sand that was participating in the motion of that which formed me.
In that moment I felt my motion center waving at me saying I'm here. I'm online I'm a grain of sand.
I LOVE this! I just got back from the Rocky Mountaineer train ride through Alberta, Canada. 11 hours/day passing through pristine mountains, valleys and trees! I live in the Virgin Islands and have a tree out my window- that has taught me so much about flexibility, flowering, hard times after storms and renewal, resilience and supporting other trees. Upon seeing the trees in Canada I felt connected, through root systems, through breathing, oxygen, existence, connected, in this amazing creation we share on the planet, the solar system, the expanding universe. A mystical experience unfolding and I am an atom of this, no better or worse than any other creation. And in this escape from the daily news I was free and all is well.
Yes, Cypriana, YES!! This is brilliant and subtle. "There was an individual grain of sand that was participating in the motion of that which formed me." I love how you hold the unboundaried and the particular on such a tender balance.
What's really funny is that I didn't even notice until I reread it that the motion center waving at me through the metaphor of a wave is particularly funny.
Hi Cynthia! Long time no see. We’ll be up as usual in August. See ya then. I hope.
Ah, suggestibility.
The Kool Aid.
Suggestibility has a companion that does much weightlifting for it. It’s called confirmation bias.
Once we buy into anything, we get a box of crayons that are all that one color and use it on everything that shows up within our field of vision. The process begins with rainbows and ends up in mud.
I watch this at work in every community I participate in; the Gurdjieff work is no exception. Perhaps this is why the (oft, it seems,intentionally ignored) adage from the work house exists in the first place: “
“If you have not by nature a critical mind your staying here is useless.”
In this sense, every position I take on the subject of the Self begins to become suspicious. Do I observe it? Analyze it? Abandon it? Critique it? They are all options, opinions; and yet in the end, what is perhaps most important is that I experience the way I inhabit it, which is best effected through my sensation.
Now, of course, that is open to question as well – what does it mean, exactly?
And it is precisely that investigation that moves us past the psychology and into the being.
I can't say that I totally understand the (meta)physics of this theory, but I believe I can sniff the chemistry.
No, Cynthia, it's not all for naught. It's the chronically unexamined life that is. I'm reminded of
I Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." The same can be said of old wineskins. Children are very suggestible for better and for worse. The question is can we successfully make that leap into mature thinking and consciousness. Many of us cannot and do not because we exist in environments that hang desperately to the status quo of the social order and discourage inquiry and self-reflection.
I agree that the biggest stumbling block for humanity is probably the me-fa. Many of us are able to rise to it but get stuck, or fall back, because so much in us. and around us, says: "Don't' go!".
There is no "tribal" push from behind and---no hand extended from the other side. There is no shock forward. I believe that psychotherapy and 12 Step programs can take us part of the way; Wisdom Schools, and the like, can shepherd us even further onto the staff and stuff of life.
In the end, it’s the old pith saying that survives the six decades. Ha! Thank you, Cynthia, for your courage. And that’s en-couraging. We connect, support, laugh and weep together. The heart expands and we feel something marvelous that’s beyond words. Music can sometimes take us there too, beyond intellect.
Yikes. Self-Awareness, and therefore Emotional Intelligence, is simply being "aware" of what my limited 3-brained neurology is capable of perceiving through thoughts, feelings and sensations? But this level of capability to perceive is wholly inadequate and, rather than telling me accurately about the self, my biology is just telling me what it believes is true based on what has been "suggested" through a plethora of outside forces and, namely, self-other relationships? This is like some sort of primitive game of telephone. A message is coming through, but its believability is highly questionable, at best, by the time it reaches consciousness and has run through the gauntlet of inner considering. Developing a sense of self sounds like believing in Santa Clause. Perhaps I must do it to pass through a stage, but in hindsight it feels childish and disorienting to realize you completely missed the heart of the matter.
Right on, Charlie! You've completely got it and you don't mince words! But having had the privilege of personally knowing you a bit—and the rock that you are—I also know that you can weather this awakening not with despair or cynicism, but with an even wider and more capacious curiosity. Keep on bushwhacking!
The gauntlet (shitbath) of inner considering, yes. And the gauntlet of Little "I" personality complexes (intellectualization, interpretation, achievement ad nauseam)
I was saying to someone recently "it's okay to not have this thought, right now" — or, it's okay to not have this pre-programmed perception app running, right now. But it is walking a fine line between abdication (delete all the apps) and surrendering to the Higher. I release any need to receive (achieve reception!) of this message coming down the telephone chain, and that cuts out about 5 stops. I release tension and this shortcuts another 5. But the real direct line is sensation (free of mental-hijack) which is both active and receptive at once.
So, here I am, a small child, pure essence. I am crushed when I am told to grow up, be responsible, get a job, make money, make a life, make a self (personality eating essence). But in some sense, this is the first Obligonian striving - to make a self/personality capable of surviving (and perhaps a bit more) in world 48.
For some of us, me included, it is hard enough to find an inner or outer platform stable enough to do this self-making, especially in light of some nagging inner sense that, while important, this self-making project is not THAT important.
But okay, I do what I can, I make a self. I learn to watch it and study it as I can, I search inwardly and outwardly, I find what i think is a Real teaching, which then tells me, at least in part, that it's great to have a self, but actually the one I have is not exactly real, and its certainty does belong to me, and in fact it is food for essence, which in turn feeds something higher, perhaps another self with a capital S or a "Real I"?
WTF!?
Now I start to question, are they f-ing with me? Mr. Gurdjieff did say suggestibility is the biggest problem faced by the three-brained beings on this ill-fated planet. They are probably just f-ing with me... its pretty funny actually, a bit twisted, but I appreciate the joke. Perhaps, I should give up on the whole program and apparently as Mr. Gurdjieff once mused, I should just dedicate my remaining time to discover new ways to please the self that I have made. . . That sells well. I think America has become its temple. . .
But for some reason (probably suggestibility), I stick with the practice, then comes a sense-feeling of Wonder . . . and I get a "taste" of the exchange between personality, and essence, and maybe even something beyond that.
Is it real? If I stop questioning whether or not it is real I am probably dead, but I have to trust its tending towards the Real. I have seen the alternative, and I know that it isn't. I'll take the bet.
I will "dare to believe in the conscious evolution of humanity".
I will and wish to make the self (bread), but not get so caught up in it, that I cannot willingly offer it up, perhaps much later, to make a soul.
Question: So why did Great Nature plant this suggestibility in us? Is it naive to think that she wouldn't give it to us if it was not essential for our individual and collective evolution?
A great observation Deborah Jo! There, precisely, is the initial catch-22; as one of my Work teachers used to say, "You can't move a plank you're standing on." As long as we totally identify our "self" with our resonant representation of ourself, we simply cannot spot the trap. The way out lies in the gradual quickening of a deeper, more capacious level of consciousness (Asian traditions call it "witnessing presence," Gurdjieff called it 'I AM'), which can spot and hold the conundrum. In the slow awakening of this new capacity, we can begin to taste "self" from the inside as a directly perceived subtle reality that wisely and gently mediates between our finite perspective and our deeper, unboundaried belonging. That would be a step in the right direction.
Ahh! Witnessing presence and "I AM." Hadn't made that connection yet. All the little "i's running around. I have been working on creating some space between reaction and response, compassion for all these parts. None of which are "I AM." Someone also mentioned Buddhist concepts of illusion, which certainly seems to relate to this. I had been playing with the concept of different levels of reality and what is true where. But this seems to point to it all being a long hall of mirrors. It would all seem frightening, except I have it on good authority that it is possible to plumb down to Truth. Through practical practices. And so I continue. Because being told what it is or is not is not the same as experiencing it. The only way out is through.
Thank you for honoring that. This is what it means to begin to witness the outside as a reflection of the inner world. This is something that I've definitely come to myself. Disgradiance this gentle ease.
This piece brings to mind the article in Wisdom Waypoints about those who said yes to the covid vaccine. I wondered how anyone could truly be in "touch" with their inner knowing and think that it was okay to have the experimental 'vaccine' injected into their most sacred physical being. "We do not see that they(judgements) are products of fantasy and imagination in the arena of self-other relationships…" Cynthia put into print her decision and then therefore "led " others. As it turns out, contrary to the what was believed by some in 2020-2022, the facts were blatantly false. To which many "inner authority's" missed the writing on the wall. The uncomfortability of those (actually two short years), which seemed like a lifetime, and the very human desire to feel good, resulted in a lot of human error in terms of trusting the inner self and the long road to honesty since, hasn't been trodden. Anyone of influence could have privately decided and not publicly announced their vaccine decision while under that particular national and global trance. "Just as we cannot directly perceive an atom, so we cannot directly perceive our own “self.”" I am not so sure about that. Sometimes we all just make bad decisions.
I think (!?) the ability to shift lens is a very healthy and necessary beginning... to cultivate agility in this regard without becoming severely ungrounded or lost in abstract thinking. For me this means entering more consciously my body-soul's wisdom (through deep listening, dance, and anything that engages body and is threaded with 'joy') and also in deep-listening engagement with Nature - rocks, flowers, trees, water, sky, birds... that enormous 'library' of living energies that reach out, touch and inform (if we are willing) the rather iron-clad constructs of our 'education' and upbringing. We cannot, and dare not, wipe away all the constructs that have served us to this point, but we can open to what calls us, invites us into deeper intimacy, and stay open and humble enough to listen and learn many the many 'languages' that Nature offers us all the time.
I see what you're saying. These beliefs are so rooted so deeply within us that yes shaking them loose can be very unsettling sometimes. I really see these things as a gradual process that these things that we come to understand they come to us when we are ready. And that takes going through the layers of them starting with the most shallow and working your way down through the deeper rooted belief systems. But I have found it's a very gentle process if you are to let it take its time with no urgency
I'm curious, these constructs that have served us, these fundamental beliefs that keep us grounded, what it we don't wipe them away. What if we can begin to see through them?
A lot of things we believe were conditioned within us before we really had the capacity to understand that was happening.
So in this case we really have to look deep to find these quiet beliefs that are so deeply rooted that we don't see them as beliefs. We just accept them as truth.
These are sometimes difficult to discern. But I feel that once we are able to at least witness these beliefs as beliefs, some of them will evaporate, some of them will just be seen as misplaced.
But then I think there is a deeper level.
A lot of our beliefs in reality come from us observing the reality around us.
We can see the way reality works. We don't have to believe it.
But then you have to ask yourself do we really see the way reality works?
Is what we see as reality really the way reality works? Or have we just seen it work this way so long that we believe it's true.
I'm just saying, when I read your words about beliefs that we cannot or even should not set aside for at least a moment to reconsider, it just inspired me to question that.
It took me four readings and reading all the responses to digest this beyond words or images.
In my mind, Plato's cave, or the Cloud of Unknowing- or Gospel of Thomas; Logion 5 "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed..." I open to this as I attempt to release & "to die before I die" into second body as my embodied time here on earth begins its closing...
And I just have to add "Cynthia, what are you suggesting with this post?" :-)
I remember how helpful and important your teaching on the 4 voices was for me - soul, Spirit, nafs, heart. Given what you write here, I'm curious if your thinking about Soul has changed since I encountered that teaching about ten years ago. Would welcome a post about Soul- its definition in classic Christian teaching and how Gurdjieff may define it differently.
If the autobiographical self—the one that observes itself, judges, interprets, and tells its own story—is a resonant representation generated by Itoklanoz, then who or what recognizes that this is so? Who experiences the collapse of the suggestion?
And if one answer is that, in self-remembering, another quality of attention or consciousness is present: How do I recognize that this, too, is not likewise a particularly subtle suggestion—a still more refined resonant representation with which consciousness identifies?
If i, in the midst of Centering Prayer experience, “For now I know in part; then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12), so that suddenly something recognizes itself that is not “I,” yet is also not separate from me - how does it become evident that our identification with the ordinary, suggestible self is truly dissolving? How do we know we aren't simply trapped in a more refined version of the same suggestion?
When the time comes
that you are able to look upon
the icon of your own being
which came into existence at the beginning,
and neither dies nor has been fully revealed,
will you be able to stand it?
What if that realization doesn't feel so foreign?
I feel like that I'm standing at the edge of a subtle sublime.
In meditation today I realized myself as a little teeny tiny grain of sand. But then also I realized the sand is participating in the immense beach of an ocean, and the ocean is part of the planet and the planet of course is the solar system, and I realized a connection within all of that.
But then I felt the ocean surf pick me up and include me in its motion.
In which case I was one with the motion of the ocean, I was in the ocean participating fully but I realized that this is a different metaphor than we usually see.
There wasn't a drop of water returning to the source. There was an individual grain of sand that was participating in the motion of that which formed me.
In that moment I felt my motion center waving at me saying I'm here. I'm online I'm a grain of sand.
I LOVE this! I just got back from the Rocky Mountaineer train ride through Alberta, Canada. 11 hours/day passing through pristine mountains, valleys and trees! I live in the Virgin Islands and have a tree out my window- that has taught me so much about flexibility, flowering, hard times after storms and renewal, resilience and supporting other trees. Upon seeing the trees in Canada I felt connected, through root systems, through breathing, oxygen, existence, connected, in this amazing creation we share on the planet, the solar system, the expanding universe. A mystical experience unfolding and I am an atom of this, no better or worse than any other creation. And in this escape from the daily news I was free and all is well.
Yes, Cypriana, YES!! This is brilliant and subtle. "There was an individual grain of sand that was participating in the motion of that which formed me." I love how you hold the unboundaried and the particular on such a tender balance.
What's really funny is that I didn't even notice until I reread it that the motion center waving at me through the metaphor of a wave is particularly funny.
I did not intend that pun. But there it is.
Hi Cynthia! Long time no see. We’ll be up as usual in August. See ya then. I hope.
Ah, suggestibility.
The Kool Aid.
Suggestibility has a companion that does much weightlifting for it. It’s called confirmation bias.
Once we buy into anything, we get a box of crayons that are all that one color and use it on everything that shows up within our field of vision. The process begins with rainbows and ends up in mud.
I watch this at work in every community I participate in; the Gurdjieff work is no exception. Perhaps this is why the (oft, it seems,intentionally ignored) adage from the work house exists in the first place: “
“If you have not by nature a critical mind your staying here is useless.”
In this sense, every position I take on the subject of the Self begins to become suspicious. Do I observe it? Analyze it? Abandon it? Critique it? They are all options, opinions; and yet in the end, what is perhaps most important is that I experience the way I inhabit it, which is best effected through my sensation.
Now, of course, that is open to question as well – what does it mean, exactly?
And it is precisely that investigation that moves us past the psychology and into the being.
God bless.
Hey Lee,
“Every position I take on the subject of the Self begins to become suspicious.”
Thank you! This deeply resonates with me.
And that raises a question: How do I know whether what I experience as resonance is genuine, or simply „confirmation bias“ at work?
I have noticed that what feels „true“ often touches a different place inside me. It goes straight to the heart—almost like a gentle shock.
Can I ever know? Or does the very moment I think I know, I begin painting with the same crayon?
What in me wants to know that? Is it the same part that wants to buy into it?
I can't say that I totally understand the (meta)physics of this theory, but I believe I can sniff the chemistry.
No, Cynthia, it's not all for naught. It's the chronically unexamined life that is. I'm reminded of
I Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." The same can be said of old wineskins. Children are very suggestible for better and for worse. The question is can we successfully make that leap into mature thinking and consciousness. Many of us cannot and do not because we exist in environments that hang desperately to the status quo of the social order and discourage inquiry and self-reflection.
I agree that the biggest stumbling block for humanity is probably the me-fa. Many of us are able to rise to it but get stuck, or fall back, because so much in us. and around us, says: "Don't' go!".
There is no "tribal" push from behind and---no hand extended from the other side. There is no shock forward. I believe that psychotherapy and 12 Step programs can take us part of the way; Wisdom Schools, and the like, can shepherd us even further onto the staff and stuff of life.
In the end, it’s the old pith saying that survives the six decades. Ha! Thank you, Cynthia, for your courage. And that’s en-couraging. We connect, support, laugh and weep together. The heart expands and we feel something marvelous that’s beyond words. Music can sometimes take us there too, beyond intellect.
Music… yes.
Thank you, Cynthia. Your reflection has stayed with me all day. It has gradually become a prayer:
"Lord, help me hear what is true, recognize what is mistaken, and not confuse either with my own reactions."
Yikes. Self-Awareness, and therefore Emotional Intelligence, is simply being "aware" of what my limited 3-brained neurology is capable of perceiving through thoughts, feelings and sensations? But this level of capability to perceive is wholly inadequate and, rather than telling me accurately about the self, my biology is just telling me what it believes is true based on what has been "suggested" through a plethora of outside forces and, namely, self-other relationships? This is like some sort of primitive game of telephone. A message is coming through, but its believability is highly questionable, at best, by the time it reaches consciousness and has run through the gauntlet of inner considering. Developing a sense of self sounds like believing in Santa Clause. Perhaps I must do it to pass through a stage, but in hindsight it feels childish and disorienting to realize you completely missed the heart of the matter.
Right on, Charlie! You've completely got it and you don't mince words! But having had the privilege of personally knowing you a bit—and the rock that you are—I also know that you can weather this awakening not with despair or cynicism, but with an even wider and more capacious curiosity. Keep on bushwhacking!
The gauntlet (shitbath) of inner considering, yes. And the gauntlet of Little "I" personality complexes (intellectualization, interpretation, achievement ad nauseam)
I was saying to someone recently "it's okay to not have this thought, right now" — or, it's okay to not have this pre-programmed perception app running, right now. But it is walking a fine line between abdication (delete all the apps) and surrendering to the Higher. I release any need to receive (achieve reception!) of this message coming down the telephone chain, and that cuts out about 5 stops. I release tension and this shortcuts another 5. But the real direct line is sensation (free of mental-hijack) which is both active and receptive at once.
(Miss you; come east once in awhile willya)
So, here I am, a small child, pure essence. I am crushed when I am told to grow up, be responsible, get a job, make money, make a life, make a self (personality eating essence). But in some sense, this is the first Obligonian striving - to make a self/personality capable of surviving (and perhaps a bit more) in world 48.
For some of us, me included, it is hard enough to find an inner or outer platform stable enough to do this self-making, especially in light of some nagging inner sense that, while important, this self-making project is not THAT important.
But okay, I do what I can, I make a self. I learn to watch it and study it as I can, I search inwardly and outwardly, I find what i think is a Real teaching, which then tells me, at least in part, that it's great to have a self, but actually the one I have is not exactly real, and its certainty does belong to me, and in fact it is food for essence, which in turn feeds something higher, perhaps another self with a capital S or a "Real I"?
WTF!?
Now I start to question, are they f-ing with me? Mr. Gurdjieff did say suggestibility is the biggest problem faced by the three-brained beings on this ill-fated planet. They are probably just f-ing with me... its pretty funny actually, a bit twisted, but I appreciate the joke. Perhaps, I should give up on the whole program and apparently as Mr. Gurdjieff once mused, I should just dedicate my remaining time to discover new ways to please the self that I have made. . . That sells well. I think America has become its temple. . .
Insert the seek, find, confusion, disturbance, frustration, rage, depression, cynicism, cycle here.
But for some reason (probably suggestibility), I stick with the practice, then comes a sense-feeling of Wonder . . . and I get a "taste" of the exchange between personality, and essence, and maybe even something beyond that.
Is it real? If I stop questioning whether or not it is real I am probably dead, but I have to trust its tending towards the Real. I have seen the alternative, and I know that it isn't. I'll take the bet.
I will "dare to believe in the conscious evolution of humanity".
I will and wish to make the self (bread), but not get so caught up in it, that I cannot willingly offer it up, perhaps much later, to make a soul.
Question: So why did Great Nature plant this suggestibility in us? Is it naive to think that she wouldn't give it to us if it was not essential for our individual and collective evolution?
Thank you!
WOW! this also makes me think of the Buddhist concept that our idea of reality is illusion. Much to ponder here. Literally Mind Blowing. Thank you.
I’m not sure l fully understand. And the part that seems to understand, does not know how to be different. To not be susceptible to suggestibility.
A great observation Deborah Jo! There, precisely, is the initial catch-22; as one of my Work teachers used to say, "You can't move a plank you're standing on." As long as we totally identify our "self" with our resonant representation of ourself, we simply cannot spot the trap. The way out lies in the gradual quickening of a deeper, more capacious level of consciousness (Asian traditions call it "witnessing presence," Gurdjieff called it 'I AM'), which can spot and hold the conundrum. In the slow awakening of this new capacity, we can begin to taste "self" from the inside as a directly perceived subtle reality that wisely and gently mediates between our finite perspective and our deeper, unboundaried belonging. That would be a step in the right direction.
Ahh! Witnessing presence and "I AM." Hadn't made that connection yet. All the little "i's running around. I have been working on creating some space between reaction and response, compassion for all these parts. None of which are "I AM." Someone also mentioned Buddhist concepts of illusion, which certainly seems to relate to this. I had been playing with the concept of different levels of reality and what is true where. But this seems to point to it all being a long hall of mirrors. It would all seem frightening, except I have it on good authority that it is possible to plumb down to Truth. Through practical practices. And so I continue. Because being told what it is or is not is not the same as experiencing it. The only way out is through.
Thank you
Genital gradient.
Thank you for honoring that. This is what it means to begin to witness the outside as a reflection of the inner world. This is something that I've definitely come to myself. Disgradiance this gentle ease.
This piece brings to mind the article in Wisdom Waypoints about those who said yes to the covid vaccine. I wondered how anyone could truly be in "touch" with their inner knowing and think that it was okay to have the experimental 'vaccine' injected into their most sacred physical being. "We do not see that they(judgements) are products of fantasy and imagination in the arena of self-other relationships…" Cynthia put into print her decision and then therefore "led " others. As it turns out, contrary to the what was believed by some in 2020-2022, the facts were blatantly false. To which many "inner authority's" missed the writing on the wall. The uncomfortability of those (actually two short years), which seemed like a lifetime, and the very human desire to feel good, resulted in a lot of human error in terms of trusting the inner self and the long road to honesty since, hasn't been trodden. Anyone of influence could have privately decided and not publicly announced their vaccine decision while under that particular national and global trance. "Just as we cannot directly perceive an atom, so we cannot directly perceive our own “self.”" I am not so sure about that. Sometimes we all just make bad decisions.
It’s quite a feat to get beyond our self-image but when we break through - get momentary glimpses - it dissolves.
Seems to me that these sorts of concepts cannot really be seen when we are standing inside of them.
Once we were able to observe these things then we are seeing the forest as well as the trees.
Or is this just another lens?
I think (!?) the ability to shift lens is a very healthy and necessary beginning... to cultivate agility in this regard without becoming severely ungrounded or lost in abstract thinking. For me this means entering more consciously my body-soul's wisdom (through deep listening, dance, and anything that engages body and is threaded with 'joy') and also in deep-listening engagement with Nature - rocks, flowers, trees, water, sky, birds... that enormous 'library' of living energies that reach out, touch and inform (if we are willing) the rather iron-clad constructs of our 'education' and upbringing. We cannot, and dare not, wipe away all the constructs that have served us to this point, but we can open to what calls us, invites us into deeper intimacy, and stay open and humble enough to listen and learn many the many 'languages' that Nature offers us all the time.
I see what you're saying. These beliefs are so rooted so deeply within us that yes shaking them loose can be very unsettling sometimes. I really see these things as a gradual process that these things that we come to understand they come to us when we are ready. And that takes going through the layers of them starting with the most shallow and working your way down through the deeper rooted belief systems. But I have found it's a very gentle process if you are to let it take its time with no urgency
I'm curious, these constructs that have served us, these fundamental beliefs that keep us grounded, what it we don't wipe them away. What if we can begin to see through them?
A lot of things we believe were conditioned within us before we really had the capacity to understand that was happening.
So in this case we really have to look deep to find these quiet beliefs that are so deeply rooted that we don't see them as beliefs. We just accept them as truth.
These are sometimes difficult to discern. But I feel that once we are able to at least witness these beliefs as beliefs, some of them will evaporate, some of them will just be seen as misplaced.
But then I think there is a deeper level.
A lot of our beliefs in reality come from us observing the reality around us.
We can see the way reality works. We don't have to believe it.
But then you have to ask yourself do we really see the way reality works?
Is what we see as reality really the way reality works? Or have we just seen it work this way so long that we believe it's true.
I'm just saying, when I read your words about beliefs that we cannot or even should not set aside for at least a moment to reconsider, it just inspired me to question that.
It took me four readings and reading all the responses to digest this beyond words or images.
In my mind, Plato's cave, or the Cloud of Unknowing- or Gospel of Thomas; Logion 5 "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed..." I open to this as I attempt to release & "to die before I die" into second body as my embodied time here on earth begins its closing...
And I just have to add "Cynthia, what are you suggesting with this post?" :-)
I remember how helpful and important your teaching on the 4 voices was for me - soul, Spirit, nafs, heart. Given what you write here, I'm curious if your thinking about Soul has changed since I encountered that teaching about ten years ago. Would welcome a post about Soul- its definition in classic Christian teaching and how Gurdjieff may define it differently.
Dear Cynthia,
If the autobiographical self—the one that observes itself, judges, interprets, and tells its own story—is a resonant representation generated by Itoklanoz, then who or what recognizes that this is so? Who experiences the collapse of the suggestion?
And if one answer is that, in self-remembering, another quality of attention or consciousness is present: How do I recognize that this, too, is not likewise a particularly subtle suggestion—a still more refined resonant representation with which consciousness identifies?
If i, in the midst of Centering Prayer experience, “For now I know in part; then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12), so that suddenly something recognizes itself that is not “I,” yet is also not separate from me - how does it become evident that our identification with the ordinary, suggestible self is truly dissolving? How do we know we aren't simply trapped in a more refined version of the same suggestion?