Robert S. De Ropp - Warrior’s Way: A Twentieth Century Odyssey

fabric · Jan 12, 2017

I recently read “Warrior’s Way: A Twentieth Century Odyssey” by Robert S. De Ropp and found it to be a great book. It has been mentioned on the forum a few times and the bits I read really piqued my curiosity. I had a look and it doesn’t appear to have yet been reviewed so I put together some of my favourite passages from the book, ones that I found insightful or just really interesting (like some of his views on Ouspensky). A lot of it is not particularly “new” in the sense that the concepts illustrated have been discussed by other authors and elsewhere on the forum. What I really liked was the delivery: very practical and not shrouded in obscure esoteric wording. The writing is direct and to the point while being sincere and witty at the same time, imho.

From the back cover:

Warrior’s Way is a genuinely reflective memoir, by a man who believed deeply that the unexamined life is not worth living. De Ropp’s autobiography makes available to a new generation of readers the penetrating insight and sparkling commentary of a consciousness explorer who was the first scientist to collect and publish information on mind altering drugs, longevity, meditation techniques, and ecological living. His candid use of archetypes throughout his story – Magician, Scientist, Missionary, Domestic Oaf, Hermit and always, the Warrior – makes this account of one man’s life-voyage in a personal “ship of fools” an important resource for those who truly wish to follow “the unmarked path”.

I also liked personal observations on which “I” was motivating certain choices he made in life through his use of a “ship of fools”. I thought that to be a great way to frame the interplay between the different aspects of the personality, the multitude of “I’s” and how their influence can have drastic effects on the decisions one makes in life. Applying it to myself, I could recognize similar fools on board my ship and some of the games they played.

I learned that all life games can be played either in the spirit of the Warrior or in the spirit of the slave. My life games were determined by the predilections of the various members of my ship of fools. The author dreamed of writing books. The scientist dreamed of performing experiments. The mystic dreamed of penetrating new worlds of the mind and of consciousness. The Whole-earther dreamed of a little farm on which he would be self-sufficient. The fisherman dreamed of the ocean with its white surf and floating seaweeds and of the good fish dinners it provides when conditions were right.

So each of the crew members had his own game.

If I were to pick the 3 most influential crew members I would call them the engineer, the hopeless romantic and the daredevil, each loosely representing the different centers. While others would occasionally try to “take over the ship” (it’s a mutiny I tell ya!), these were the ones that constantly battled with each other to plot the course and would often just end up going in circles never getting anywhere until some agreement was reached.

The engineer - dreamed of designing complex machinery and taking things apart to figure out how they work. Unfortunately they couldn’t always be put back together. :scared:

Generally I like the engineer for his cautiousness, attention to detail and burning desire to know “how” and “why”. The only problem with him is that he is rather detached from a lot of things and just wants to solely work to figure out things, shutting himself out of the world. He lacks perspective in the emotional sense as he doesn’t like emotions all that much. They often get in the way of things and detract from what he considers and “objective view” of things. While it can be true in some cases, “The development of the emotional center is the principle object of esoteric culture. We shall see later that it is only through this center that man can find the key which will open the door to give him access to a higher life.” So likeable as he is, on his own he can’t make it no matter how much he thinks he can.

The daredevil – dreamed of adventure, extreme sports, taking it to the max. His lack of fear allows him to take risks that can be dangerous to the physical aspect, though that also comes in handy when in social situations where group settings can tend to make one shy or withdrawn or emergency situations where quick action is needed. He always wants to push things to the extreme, not just physically but mentally as well. Now these can be good things as he’s gotten me through some tough times by his sheer will and “let’s do this!” attitude but also problematic when the body/mind needs rest but wants to keep on pushing, which inevitably leads to burn out or poor choices.

The hopeless romantic – dreamed of an idyllic world where all is good. Not very realistic but is very passionate and emotional about things. This can be good and bad as well. Good in the sense that it provides motivation to do things that he really believes in but can be bad when it comes to things like relationships. His naivety leaves him open to manipulation (from both women and men) and misuse energy from the emotional center and do silly things like going off to La-La land. The romantic and the engineer tend to always be at odds with each other. Especially in matters of the heart. The engineer always a pragmatist (there has to be point to it or be useful in some way), the romantic an idealist (thinking of what could be, which is mostly fantasy). But the romantic’s redeeming quality is that he really cares a lot about others – maybe sometimes a little too much! But if it weren’t for him I think it would be difficult to connect with others at a deeper level.

On sleep

We humans talked about “I,” but we had no I. Actually there were dozens of I’s. Every thought , every passing desire became I for the moment. We had no real will. Our will was divided among all the different I’s and was as weak as they were. We were puppets pulled here and there by external forces. We had no inner direction. We had no control, were simply biochemical machines, unstable and unpredictable.

None of this was very reassuring, but how could one argue about the correctness of the diagnosis? In any case the situation, though desperate, was not hopeless. A few, a very few, who really wanted to change their fate could do so. Nature, Ouspensky taught, had played a trick on man. She had endowed him with quite remarkable potentialities, then, as if repenting of her generosity, had introduced certain defects into his makeup. The chief of these defects was a tendency to live in a world of fantasy instead of the real world. In this world of fantasy man lied to himself. He lied about everything. Most of all he lied about his inner state. He imagined that he was awake when actually he was walking around in a state of waking sleep.

In order to awaken fully he had first to realize that he was asleep. But this was where Nature played her trick. If you said to someone “You are asleep,” he would reply, “No. I am awake.” Simply by saying “I am awake,” he would awaken for a moment and then immediately go to sleep again.

All the absurdities of human life, the frantic boasts and foolish words, the futile wars, the revolutions that destroyed millions in the name of progress, the religions that sanctioned burning heretics in the name of a God of love all had a single explanation: sleep. Indeed Ouspensky’s whole message could be summarized in one sentence.

I show you sleep and the struggle with sleep.

How did one struggle with sleep? In this respect the teaching was strictly practical. In the beginning on could change nothing. It was necessary to observe. We were very complex machines. If you wanted to learn how to control a complex machine, you first had to understand its parts. Observe, observe, observe. But to observe correctly one needed to know certain things. And one needed help. We were in the situation of people in prison trying to escape. One person alone might not have much of a chance. Several people together would have a better one. A group of prisoners that had helpers on the outside would have an even better chance.

The so-called esoteric schools were simply organizations to help a small number of people escape form the world of fantasy into the real world. Man is a prisoner of his own lies. If he knows the truth the truth will set him free.

But why can the esoteric schools help only a small number of people? Why can’t everyone escape?

The question was frequently asked. I asked myself. The answer was obvious. Only a few could escape because only a few realized that they were in prison. The esoteric schools cannot force people to escape. Escaping involved enormous effort continued over a long period. Why should people put forth enormous efforts if they did not even realize they were in prison?

One of the most attractive things for me was the practical nature of the teaching. I never really examined the mechanical aspect of myself and humanity in the past (before G), but when it was framed that way it made perfect sense. In order to learn how to ‘operate’ a machine, one had to understand what all the different parts do and their relationship to each other. Since there are so many parts, one alone can’t simply figure out all of this. It’s a major project and like the blind trying to piece together different parts of an elephant, you need a team, each adding their own data to the puzzle and finding out what works, how, why etc. Like the prisoner trying to escape from prison, he needs tools, and needs to know the functions of all those tools. In the case of struggling with sleep, man himself is his own tool but they don’t do any good unless it is sharp and in good working order (hence the importance working on mental, physical and emotional issues). And more than one is needed (i.e. network). Digging oneself out of prison with only a spoon would be very slow progress indeed!

On Ouspensky

Oh, those all-night drinking parties! How many times have I sat up with Ouspensky in the kitchen drinking far more than was good for me, losing sleep waiting in vain for him to let fall some pearls of wisdom. But the pearls rarely fell. Nearly always we were regaled only with tales of Moscow and Petersburg. For this was one of the Ouspensky’s weaknesses. He could not leave Russia. Nostalgia chained him to that land to which he could never return, to the streets of Moscow, to the Novsky Prospekt, to the nightclub called “The Wandering Dog” in which he and his journalist buddies would gather after midnight and sit up over drinks till all hours discussing every question under the sun. He would tell us how, among his friends, he was always addressed as “Ouspensky Fourth Dimension,” how he knew “everyone in Moscow,” how he moved in all sorts of circles, knew both the spies of the Czarist police and members of various revolutionary organizations. In his hankering for the old says he was also Russian. Russian emigres in general seem unable to sever the umbilical cord that binds them to Mother Russia and for this reason tend to live in the past.

Nostalgia! How well I knew that particular disease of the spirit. During my season in hell in Australia I had retreated entirely into the past, had lived among the peasants in Lithuania, among the woods and meadows I had known and loved. Nostalgia practically destroyed me. It cut me off from the real world, weakened me, confused me, brought me to the edge of suicide. Nostalgia is fatal to the spirit of the warrior, whose task it is to live in the here and now, not hankering after the past or fussing about the future. So Ouspensky’s preoccupation with a shadowy Russia that had passed away reduced his personal power. It also caused him, during those long night sessions, to become something of a bore.

Nostalgia’s a tricky one. It can be nice to reminisce but I think there’s a fine line before it becomes “living in the past”. There are times when I find myself thinking back “to the good ole days”, back when life was care free, just fun and games, knew something was wrong with the world but didn’t care. And problem with that was it kept me tied in to the past. Especially during the process of awakening (still a work in progress btw) where the only way to move on was to leave that behind but nostalgia kept me on 2 stools, always looking for an opportunity to ‘re-live’ the good old days. But no matter what I did, it was never like it was and never could be like it was. I was chasing a dream even though I knew deep down there would be no real satisfaction in it.

On Madame Ouspensky

She spoke of the problems of the intellectuals. Unbalanced people. They lived in their intellects. Intellect by itself had no power. Power lay in the emotional center. One could come to emotional center through the moving center. This was why hard physical work was useful. Hard work helped us to stay quite long enough to see ourselves. [And others too!] We were like a zoo, full of different animals. It was necessary to know one’s animals.

[…]

She went on to talk about personality. Personality was not all bad. It was mixed, like tar with honey. One had to distinguish between the honey and the tar. One had to know who was who. If one had a guardian at the gate, those who when in and out could be scrutinized. If there was no guardian or the guardian was asleep, anyone could enter the house. Accept or reject, this was the basis of the Work. We had a second of choice either to accept or reject an impression or thought. The inner work was not heroic effort like climbing Mount Everest. Most of the time was simply a matter of inner stop. Stop thoughts. Thoughts ran round and round “like squirrel in wheel.” It was necessary to put a stick in the wheel. To do it again and again. Gradually this would create a change, like drops of water wearing away hard stone. We would fall down again and again and have to pick ourselves up. Never despair. Never indulge in self-pity. Self-pity was the worst of sins, along with self-importance. Once we realized our own nothingness, we could emerge into the real world.

This rang very true for me, but it was not something I was able to do until I was able to accept the fact I was asleep and "can’t do anything" unless I really desired above all things to wake up. The choice of accepting or rejecting thoughts and impressions was not easily done at first. It was always a struggle between the different fools wanting to be in charge of the situation and not having any real will. But, over time, continuously trying and forcing myself to choose things that were aligned with the aim of waking up, it would become a little easier. Like a muscle, the more I stopped to really think about what I was seeing, hearing or feeling, the more I found the strength to reject the things that were not ‘real’ or prevented me from growing. But even that's tricky too. Think too much about it and you can get lost. That's where networking comes in. While I’ve gotten better at recognizing those things, the struggle between “yes” and “no” is always there, and should always be there or I’m just not paying attention.

More on Ouspensky

Furthermore, his [Ouspensky] mental state was for from good. His paranoid tendencies had become more pronounced. He was apt, at the slightest provocation, to throw people out of the Work. One of his oldest pupils, J.G. Bennet, had been excommunicated, along with all the people who studied with him. We were forbidden to see or communicate with Bennett or with any of the people in Bennett’s group. I was reminded of the Stalinist purges and of the words of one of the elders in the Work who had always had reservations about Ouspensky: “One must distinguish between what is the teaching and what is just Russian.”

I kept silent. The Ouspensky regime was well and truly authoritarian and no criticism was permitted. I even nodded agreement when Ouspensky began berating Bennett for, as he put it, “dealing in psychological black-market,” by which he implied that Bennett had stolen his ideas. What I saw in Ouspensky was truly frightening. Here was a man who had one of the best minds of anyone I had met indulging in really ridiculous fantasies. The resentment I felt toward him for leaving us during the dark days of 1940 now increased. I was not at all loyal, had always considered loyalty a mixture of sentimentality and stupidity. My interest, as a scientist, was in observing reality. I could see what was happening very clearly and made no attempt to hide from the unpleasant knowledge. Ouspensky was no longer a teacher. He had lost his power and wrecked his health by indulgence in two poisons, alcohol and nostalgia. The only honest thing for him to do at that point was to face his own weakness, send all his disciples packing, close down that ostentatious house, and either die or, by a supreme effort, recover his lost power.

Actually he did neither.

His comment on loyalty reminded me of Gurdjieff when he talked about sincerity:

"As I have said already, one of the first demands is sincerity. But there are different kinds of sincerity. There is clever sincerity and there is stupid sincerity, just as there is clever insincerity and stupid insincerity. Both stupid sincerity and stupid insincerity are equally mechanical. But if a man wishes to learn to be cleverly sincere, he must be sincere first of all with his teacher and with people who are senior to him in the work. This will be 'clever sincerity.' But it here necessary to note that sincerity must not become 'lack of considering.' Lack of considering in relation to the teacher or in relation to those whom the teacher has appointed, as I have said already, destroys all possibility of any work. If he wishes to learn and to be cleverly sincere he must be insincere about the work and he must learn to be silent when he ought to be silent with people outside it, who can neither understand nor appreciate it. But sincerity in the group is an absolute demand, because, if a man continues to lie in the group in the same way as he lies to himself and others in life, he will never learn to distinguish the truth from a lie."

I wonder if something similar applies here, as in clever loyalty and stupid loyalty? Stupid loyalty would be that as he described. Perhaps a sort of blind allegiance or belief in a cause or person without really understanding or knowing the reasons why. Just because it’s your duty, that one feels strongly or really identified with it and is really mechanical in nature. How many are ‘loyal’ to their countries even when that country has become completely corrupted? Clever loyalty on the other hand, would be that in which one stays true to their aim in the work, committed to it and understands the reasons for its purpose and ready to always question it.

On Alexis Carrel

He wrote poignantly of the decline of France:

The young Frenchman of the defeat, rude, slovenly, unshaven, slouching about with his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was ll to representative of the anemic barbarism on which the France of those years prided herself. She had destroyed her own ability and strength. Her fate was inevitable, for she had committed the unforgivable sin. Nature annihilates those who abandon themselves. Suicide often takes a subtle and pleasant form such as an abundance of food, soft living, complete economic security and absence of responsibility. No one realized the dangers of the comfort we enjoyed in the years before the world war. Neither did they realize the dangers of the excessive eating and drinking to which everyone was addicted from infancy to old age. To have a safe position, exempt from responsibility, in some government department seemed to most people high desirable. Yet this sort of existence is as dangerous as the drug habit both for the individual and for the nation.

He implored his country men to live strenuously, to avoid idle chatter, silly novels, the lies and absurdities of the radio and the movies. How many precious hours are frittered in activities worthy only of demented fools? What is the point of living if it consists only of dancing, driving about in cars, being a slave to one’s appetite, pursuing fantasies instead of realities? Instead of pampering ourselves, we should learn to endure heat and cold, walk, run, climb in all sorts of weather, avoid as far as possible the artificial atmosphere of offices, flats, motor cars, eat sparingly, sleep neither too much nor too little, develop our bodies, our minds, our aesthetic ability, and find satisfaction for our religious urges. People who have the strength and courage to order their existences will be magnificently rewarded. “Life will give herself to them as she gave herself to the inhabitants of ancient Greece, in her full strength and beauty.”

Although Carrel is describing France there, the parallels to the US are striking. Seems like this slow suicide is a repeating theme throughout history.

This passage also brought to mind this:

Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the world will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the 'past.' People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the 'Future.' -- Cassiopaeans, 09-28-02

On harmonizing the brain and carriage

[…] To develop his full powers, he must learn to harmonize his conflicting brain systems.

Harmonize the brain systems. This was the essence of Creative Psychology. The most important single idea I had learned from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky concerned the education of the five centers. I had learned during all those years of study and experiment that my five centers functioned with hideous inefficiency. The intellectual center created fantasies that prevented my making contact with the real world. The emotional center took these fantasies and charged them with fear, anxiety, hatred, envy, or vanity. The combination of negative fantasies and negative emotions affected both the moving and instinctive centers, producing needless muscular tension and various more or less destructive autonomic responses. Even the sex center was poisoned by these malfunctionings of the other centers. The result was disharmony and unhappiness, an inner disease, which made life hardly worth living.

I had found that no improvement in my inner state was possible unless the malfunctioning of the various centers was corrected. Gurdjieff, in one of his parables, had portrayed the situation of underdeveloped man with admirable clarity. Man could be thought of as a conveyance: horse, carriage, driver. In our usual disharmonized state the horse was unruly and ill cared for, the driver drunk or asleep, and the carriage in poor repair. As for the Master (higher consciousness), which ought to ride in the carriage and tell the driver where to go, it was not there at all. Instead the conveyance was for hire like a cab. Any passing “I” could take over and tell it where to go. So it traveled now here, now there, creaking and groaning, with its unoiled wheels, its starved horse, its drunken or dreaming cabbie. It was not surprising, with millions of such crazy conveyances careening around on the surface of our Ill-starred planet, that horrendous collisions and catastrophes kept happening. The wonder was that a creature so out of touch with the real world had managed to survive at all .

[…]

On the fourth way one did not retire to a cave, live on nuts and berries, spend endless hours in uncomfortable postures, trying to meditate. One took part in life, engaged in the struggle, contributed to society, paid one’s dues. One was, in short, a householder, able to cope with the struggles and challenges that life offered and at the same time to follow the Way. The inner work, to be of any real value, had to be practiced under all sorts of conditions easy and difficult, pleasant and unpleasant.
A teacher can create conditions favorable to work and hold up a mirror. That is all.

Getting the centers to work in harmony. That’s something to aspire to isn’t it? At first it’s all a jumbled mess, each center working with the wrong energy, causing discord in the body and mind. And you don’t even know why! It’s just how you are. It’s a wonder how we even get through life at all in this state but people manage it. The idea of living in such a state, being subject to laws which only concern was to provide food for the moon, sounded abysmal to me. Not to say that in me the centers work as harmoniously as I would like them to, but at this point, I can sometimes see when they aren’t. Those are the opportunities to do something about it. Or at least try. And what better way is there to practice other than engaging in life, in the real world where many and varied challenges are there to temper the spirit?

On soul glue

The family farm. Better still the expanded family farm. If several families could learn to cooperate and pool their resource, they could buy a larger place than any single family could afford. I spoke about this to be the group that had assembled round me. We had to stop talking about higher states of consciousness and interact directly with the forces that gave us life: the sun, the soil, the biosphere. We had to be gardeners, and fishermen, carpenters, electricians, engineers. We had to learn to work together and put up with each other. We had to find “soul glue,” the mysterious adhesive that holds a group together.

What is soul glue? I had to admit I did not know. In Ouspensky’s group the power of the teacher had held us together. Authoritarianism was glue of a sort, but not the kind of glue I had in mind.

Good question. What is it exactly? What is that special something that some groups have that keep them together and allow everyone to play their role and work synergistically with each other and achieve great things? Is it simply a common aim and sharing similar values? But when I think of all the Gurdjieff groups that had (supposedly) the same aim but it didn’t work out for many, so that alone may not be quite enough. Or perhaps what’s needed is just the right blend of temperaments? Or is there more to it, something on a deeper level like karmic connections, past lives etc; the burning desire to know the truth? Perhaps it might be a combination of all of these, in just the right amounts that keeps them together despite the challenges thrown at them.

On teachers

The only true teacher is one who teaches by example. The true teacher is like Leo in The Journey to the East. Wh0 was Leo? He seemed, to the junior Members of the League, to be simply a servant. Leo never lectured anyone, never preached, never gave himself airs. Simply a servant.

He who would be greatest let him be as a servant among you.

But the Journey to the East depended on Leo, and when he disappeared in the Morbio Inferiore the whole enterprise seemed to grind to a halt.

Without Leo, his handsome face, his good humor and his songs, without his enthusiasm for our great undertaking, the undertaking itself seemed in some mysterious way to lose meaning.

Leo, the perfect teacher of the Way, so well disguised that his fellows did not even know he was their teacher! Teach only by example, never preach, never lecture, never castigate. But in order to teach by example one must have Being. And Being cannot be faked. One can fake knowledge. One can lay down a smoke screen of words and confuse all but the discerning few. But one can never fake Being. We show our level of being by our reactions, especially our reactions to insults, disappointments, disasters. You can’t fake a reaction.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that you can’t fake a reaction – because I think you can, however, I don’t think you can consistently fake it. At some point the mask will slip and you can see someone for what they really are. In some cases it takes a long time but in the end, the truth about their “being” does come out. I also would add that it is not only one’s re-actions but also actions and attitudes that show our level of being. And the same thing applies. You can fake actions but consistently over time? If those qualities aren’t there, a part of that person’s nature, it will become evident. But what if someone can "fake it until they make it'? Perhaps that quality was always there but not given a chance to grow because their circumstances (cultural, familial, societal etc) didn’t allow for it or nurture it. Although I think the latter is not too often the case.

On seekers after truth

The Seekers after Truth

It is by far the most select club on earth. It is open to everyone; no distinctions are made on grounds of sex, color, or creed. The cost of admission is our illusions, all our illusions. For it stands to reason that if we want the truth we cannot at the same time take refuge in lies. But this is what we like to do. We love lies. And our fondest lies are about our own importance, about our dignity, our “human rights,” our place in nature.

[…] We cannot judge the being of another. The only benefit to be derived from the study of another person’s life is an understanding of laws. Two kinds of laws govern our lives, laws escapable and laws inescapable. Freedom consists in living under as few laws as possible, substituting intentional, self-made laws for laws imposed by outer circumstances. Richard Burton, translator of the Thousand and One Nights, expressed this idea in The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi.

Do what they manhood bids thee do.

From none but self expect applause:

He noblest lives and noblest dies

Who makes and keeps his self-made laws

This made me think of the types of things the stoics would say, proverbs to live by. The ones I find the most useful are ones that make things easier for myself and others. Do they evolve and change with time and lessons learned? I would think so. It also seems to me that the more laws one has escaped, the more self-imposed ones are required. Just a theory though. Castaneda’s teachings has some good ones. Gurdjieff's aphorisms are pretty good too.

Castaneda’s basic teachings concerning the Warrior’s Way could be summarized as follows:

A Warrior accepts everything as a challenge. He cannot indulge in self-pity, curse his fate, his god, his mate, his boss, his luck. He accepts responsibility for everything. If he puts the blame for his predicament on others, he is not a Warrior.

A Warrior lives strategically. He knows which life game he is playing and why he plays it. His battles are for power and for knowledge. His enemies are weakness and ignorance. He struggles to live by his own self-made rules and to avoid being pushed about by outside forces.

A Warrior uses death as his adviser. He is aware of the fact that his time is limited, so he cannot afford to waste time on useless fantasies or meaningless activities.

A Warrior has unbending intent. His trained will is his only weapon against the random and chaotic forces that distract, weaken, and can finally destroy him.

A Warrior knows he must confront and overcome four enemies. These enemies were listed by don Juan as fear, clarity, power, and old age. A Warrior must be able to overcome them all.

On Alan Watts

“I don’t like myself sober,” confided Alan to a friend of mine, “so I spend much of my time drunk.”

The statement aroused my wonder. How could it be that Alan Watts, so thoroughly familiar with the principles of Buddhism and Taoism, had missed the central truth? There is no self, either to like or to dislike. There is merely an agglomeration, a ship of fools committed to voyage from birth do death. But those who have understood the secret of the Way know better than to identify with the fools. Fools come and go. Now one predominates, no another. But the whole meaning of liberation or enlightenment lies in this, that we have the power to separate from the fools, to stop calling them “I,” to regard them objectively as mechanical dolls, why should I have to drug myself with alcohol in order to be able to endure their antics? They come and go. Nothing is permanent. None of them is important. As one grows older the antics of the dolls become less and less interesting. Their performances seem shadowy, unreal.

I found this to be true as I get older. In the past when I didn’t know any better, the many forms of dissociating was like a chill pill for all their antics, or even one of their antics. Everybody always wanting to go in different directions, fighting for control, one day it’s this, another day it’s that. One grows weary of it really. The whole show becomes a boring repeat of the same episodes (or programs) over and over again. New episodes do get played once in a while but eventually that ends up in repeat – and if you can step back for a moment and see them just as that, mechanical dolls, it actually becomes almost comical. A farce. You can’t help but laugh at them, it’s all so pointless! Of course it’s not easy in the heat of the moment. The mistake is taking them for “I”. I’ve made it a lot of times. Still do. It's easy to get identified with something even if you don't think you are. But at least there’s hope in that once you see it, you can be a little better prepared and know what to expect from them. It’s seizing that opportunity to separate the two that you can learn where one begins and another ends... as there are many.

Anyway, there are so many other really good bits in there, I'd just end up quoting the whole book but I think anyone who's familiar with Gurdjieff's work (or even if not) would enjoy the read. :read:

mrtn · Jan 13, 2017

thank you fabric.
i once got caught on Castaneda and stuck with it for a long time. i had contact with the material from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky only by the work of Laura and the surrounding community (like your post). it is very helpfull, especially when cross-referenced.

the nostalgia for example is one thing i know from myself. from time to time it pops up on a sudden with unbelievable intensity and one could follow it to exhaustion or until it is exhausted. i get used to it a bit. it's like as if history is probing for attachments so i go with it a little but try to come 'back' to now. there seems to be some release necessary and also some release done. older things fade away and get replaced by other topics that happended later in time.
thanks again.

Anthony · Jan 13, 2017

I thought it was a great book, timely also, given the precious snowflake syndrome, safe spaces, trigger warnings and other similar nonsense. A warrior's way couldn't be further away from such a narcissistic way of relating to the world.

To quote from the book:

The great spire represents the Warrior spirit in man, his willingness to take risks, face dangers, master his fate. But the spirit of our age is opposed to the Warrior's attitude. We want to be safe and snug and cuddled and cared for.

Robert S. De Ropp - Warrior’s Way: A Twentieth Century Odyssey

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