Les Visible and Smoking Mirrors

[Laura]

Yes, Les totally disrespected me, my family, my work, my safety, etc... but still, I had the idea that he might "wake up" if given enough space and time.  Rylek is correct when he wrote:

...how pretty much everyone who shows some potential to do some good in the world is sooner or later sidetracked by one way or another. Dolan being
another case I had in mind. Again this goes to show the importance of a network.

Without the Cs, without the network, without the robust feedback mechanism, there's no hope at all.  Unfortunately, what Les and Rich have in common are pretty big egos.  Maybe we can revisit what Lobaczewski wrote about egotism?

The second chapter sketched the human instinctive substratum’s role in our personality development, the formation of the natural world view, and societal links and structures. We also indicated that our social, psychological, and moral concepts, as well as our natural forms of reaction, are not adequate for every situation with which life confronts us. We generally wind up hurting someone if we act according to our natural concepts and reactive archetypes in situations which seem to be appropriate to our imaginings, although they are in fact essentially different.

As a rule, such different situations allowing para-appropriate reactions occur because some pathological factor difficult to understand has entered the picture. Thus, the practical value of our natural world view generally ends where psychopathology begins.

Familiarity with this common weakness of human nature and the normal person’s ‘naïveté’ is part of the specific knowledge we find in many psychopathic individuals, as well as some characteropaths.

Spellbinders of various schools attempt to provoke such para-appropriate reactions from other people in the name of their specific goals, or in the service of their reigning ideologies. That hard-to-understand pathological factor is located within the spellbinder himself.

We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously conditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and individual world view.

Egotism hampers a personality’s normal evolution because it fosters the domination of subconscious life and makes it difficult to accept disintegrative states which can be very helpful for growth and development. This egotism and rejection of disintegration  in turn favors the appearance of para-appropriate reactions as described above.

An egotist measures other people by his own yardstick, treating his concepts and experiential manner as objective criteria. He would like to force other people to feel and think very much the same way he does. ...

Proper rearing and self-rearing thus always aims at de-egotizing a young person or adult, thereby opening the door for his mind and character to develop. Practicing psychologists nevertheless commonly believe that a certain measure of egotism is useful as a factor stabilizing the personality, protecting it from overly facile neurotic disintegration, and thereby making it possible to overcome life’s difficulties. However rather exceptional people exist whose personality is very well inte-grated even though they are almost totally devoid of egotism; this allows them to understand others very easily.

The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the development of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorizing of others well deserves the title ‘king of human faults’.

Difficulties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms after a rainfall.

Egotist nations start wasting money and effort in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reasoning and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowledge other nations’ values and dissimilarities, derived from other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war.

We can differentiate between primary and secondary egotism.

The former comes from a more natural process, namely the child’s natural egotism and child-rearing errors that tend to perpetuate this childish egotism.

The secondary one occurs when a personality that has overcome his childish egotism regresses to this state under stress, which leads to an artificial attitude characterized by greater aggression and social noxiousness.

Excessive egotism is a constant property of the hysterical personality,  whether their hysteria be primary or secondary. That is why the increase in a nation’s egotism should be attributed to the above described hysterical cycle before anything else.

If we analyze the development of excessively egotistical personalities, we often find some non-pathological causes, such as having been raised in a constricted and overly routine environment or by persons less intelligent than the child.

However, the main reason for the development of an overly egotistical personality in a normal person is contamination, through psychological induction, by excessively egotistical or hysterical persons who, themselves, developed this characteristic under the influence of various pathological causes.

Most of the above-described genetic deviations cause the development of pathologically egotistical personalities, among other things.

Many people with various hereditary deviations and acquired defects develop pathological egotism. For such people, forcing others in their environment, whole social groups, and, if possible, entire nations, to feel and think like themselves becomes an internal necessity, a ruling concept. A game that a normal person would not take seriously can become a lifelong goal for them, the object of effort, sacrifices, and cunning psychological strategy.

Pathological egotism derives from repressing from one’s field of consciousness any objectionable, self-critical associations referring to one’s own nature or normality. Dramatic questions such as ‘who is abnormal here, me or this world of people who feel and think differently?’ are answered in the world’s disfavor. Such egotism is always linked to a dissimulative attitude, with a Cleckley mask over some pathological quality being hidden from consciousness, both one’s own and that of other people. The greatest intensity of such egotism can be found in the prefrontal characteropathy described above.

The importance of the contribution of this kind of egotism to the genesis of evil thus hardly needs elaboration. It is a primarily societal influence, egotizing or traumatizing others, which in turn causes further difficulties. Pathological egotism is a constant component of variegated states wherein someone who appears to be normal (although he is in fact not quite so) is driven by motivations or battles for goals a normal person considers unrealistic or unlikely. The average person might ask: ‘What could he expect to gain by that?’ Environmental opinion, however, often interprets such a situation in accordance with ‘common sense’ and is thus prone to accept a ‘more likely’ version of the situation and events. Such interpretation often results in human tragedy. We should thus always remember that the principle of law cui prodest  becomes illusory whenever some pathological factor enters the picture.

So, a person with a naturally over-developed ego that they have as a result of their upbringing then become prime targets for those with pathological egotism.  Their egos can be played so easily because they are so fragile.  Maybe that's what we are seeing here?

[Skipling]

A very cautionary tale. Reading this thread has really scared me. But I no longer think that fear has anything to do with the real me.

My father called this taking the kingdom of heaven by storm. He told me I was stealing. One ’s self, centered in the abstract thinking center, attempts to access other realms without paying the price of a life for a life. This is how I understand my own experience, and narrow escape from the seduction of something for nothing.
 
 

I think I am in the process of paying this price. When I was younger I had no idea of the consequences of certain forms of...pastimes. Nothing like Les Vis though!!!  The above quote is so very true. And then after a while denial takes hold when one refuses to listen to the good advice of others, those genuinely concerned about one's welfare. When I realised what I had "become" in relation to the child I once was I wept. It seemed incredible that I could allow myself by choices to fall so very, very low. It was fairly recently, and is an ongoing battle. I think there is hope for people entrenched in denial of varying kinds, but they simply have to be prepared to pay the price. And of course, the price is commensurate with the degree of the "sins" against one's essence. With regards to the "Faces of God" I have seen absolute horror. But, such was my vanity and my hubris, I have come to understand that the horror, and my subsequent breakdown, was necessary. There is always a lesson to be learned, but not if you are not prepared to be humble and accept the objective truth even if it feels like it is killing you. "Greater things than you or I, conduct, instruct, and reason why". With realisation comes penitence. Hopefully.

Wow, sounds like he's really happy with all those entities being on the bus, even welcomes them. That's scary in itself.   

 

Damn right it is. It's like being a 40watt lightbulb in a derelict abandoned mansion, full of hungry ghosts!!

From Paul Beekman Taylor's book on Gurdjieff and Orage:


Quote
When Munson met Orage for lunch one day in November to ask if he could join his group, he admitted that he had never had a "revelation." "You are lucky," Orage replied, "such experiences are pathological: Peeping-Tom glimpses of the universe through a smutted window. The first thing to do is clean the window pane."

Perhaps window fallers do serve a purpose after all?

I think he has no idea what he is really dealing with. This type of drugs usually makes you feel all-powerful (maybe that's the reason why he was using at the chateau to begin with: he probably felt vulnerable or insecure and needed a 'pick me up'. Or maybe he can barely function without any drugs, I don't know) and he probably thinks he in control and knows what he is doing. 
 
 
 

I have no personal knowledge of those type of substances, but I've been around a fair few "characters" who have done so in my life, and they scarcely demonstrate any real awareness from one sentence to the next. Fragmented just doesn't do it justice (eclipsed?), but the potential for lucidity is impossible until there is sobriety, and then the subsequent suffering, which is necessary if one doesn't face the facts. Les Visibles must be infested if he thinks his behaviour was normal. Detox, Detox, Detox. I need to commit to this fully too, and the EE.

Yes, Les totally disrespected me, my family, my work, my safety, etc

You can totally tell what a person is like when they're wasted on something. In winum veritas, is that the old phrase? I've got to say though I sympathise with Les Vis to a degree, because the pit of denial is a wretched state to be in; but you can only change if you really want to. Blaming others is ludicrous if you have no will.

[Laura]

Wonder what happened to Arctodus who was partly responsible for this enlightening discussion?

[Nienna]

Wonder what happened to Arctodus who was partly responsible for this enlightening discussion?

It seems that Arctodus has not been active on the forum since Sept. 12th.  This discussion began on Sept. 7th.  So it would seem that Arctodus has had enough of our uncouthness?

[Al Today]

This is the world wide web. This is what makes this network accessable to "ALL". And with "ALL", comes all types... From all over the world... Billions of combinations... For  myself, reading and observing furthers my experience. Situations have arisen where I could've/would've not thought of alone, on my own. For this alone am I thankful for the learning opportunity. Reminds me of those cell phone commercial advertisements:

The Power of the NetWork.!.!.!

It's kinda fun... Oh yeah,,, Learning is Fun...
 

[Nicolas]

Les has just written a rebuttal of the events from his visit to the chateau titled "Our Hidden Enemies Who Pose As Friends".

_http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/2011/03/our-hidden-enemies-who-pose-as-friends.html

SOTT is a wealthy operation and shouldn’t be concerned with me, especially since I’m not concerned with them. Maybe I’m getting too popular for their tastes, since the readership keeps going up and all these new projects are about to be released. I suppose once you get to a certain level, this kind of thing is going to happen. It’s why I’ve always run from it before. Fame and fortune aren’t what they crack up to be. There’s a certain kind of disorder running around at the moment that is affecting various people in respect of what goes on here. Some of it is being engineered. I only hope they will develop some new love/hate interests and leave me be. There’s no future in hammering someone for no apparent reason. It can often come back on you in surprising ways, especially in these times.

He paints quite a different story! Almost completely opposite of what was said here.

[Windmill knight]

SOTT is a wealthy operation and shouldn’t be concerned with me, especially since I’m not concerned with them. Maybe I’m getting too popular for their tastes, since the readership keeps going up and all these new projects are about to be released. I suppose once you get to a certain level, this kind of thing is going to happen. It’s why I’ve always run from it before. Fame and fortune aren’t what they crack up to be. There’s a certain kind of disorder running around at the moment that is affecting various people in respect of what goes on here. Some of it is being engineered. I only hope they will develop some new love/hate interests and leave me be. There’s no future in hammering someone for no apparent reason. It can often come back on you in surprising ways, especially in these times.

I know for a fact that the only wealth that SOTT possesses is in terms of human resources - all of which work voluntarily and without a salary. Oh, I wish SOTT was a wealthy operation - that way its editors, writers and translators would be able to quit their day-time jobs and dedicate their full talents to creative projects!

[1984]

I know for a fact that the only wealth that SOTT possesses is in terms of human resources - all of which work voluntarily and without a salary. Oh, I wish SOTT was a wealthy operation - that way its editors, writers and translators would be able to quit their day-time jobs and dedicate their full talents to creative projects!

I bet there are a few more here that wish that SOTT was a wealthy operation- just think how far-reaching we could be! Although, in fact, we are all wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, just not monetarily. 

[Kniall]

_http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/2011/03/our-hidden-enemies-who-pose-as-friends.html

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

“Every dog has his day”.

I’ve looked over the headlines to see if there was something I wanted to talk about and since I know that several of the really large events approaching aren’t in the windshield yet, though they will be soon, my inner voice is telling me to continue talking about what I brought up yesterday at Visible Origami. As a result of having made this post, a reader sent in the link to a spirited conversation taking place about me over at SOTT (Signs of the Times). There are a number of comments that are made about the night I visited them and there was a party for Joe, the Irish editor of SOTT.

I came there with Rabelais whom I had been corresponding with and had decided to visit with Susanne. Don and SOTT are down in the extreme south of France. Don lives in a modest little house in the countryside and SOTT lives in a huge, outrageous chateau that is reminiscent of something out of the Gormenghast trilogy. Don is a very interesting character and a hell of a decent guy. I genuinely love him and am putting myself on the spot here, in case the pressures from SOTT don’t work in my favor with him.

My regular readers know that I go out of my way to come across as a regular guy. I used to even do stupid -shite- to counteract the pedestal well meaning people were putting me on. That’s counter-productive though and I am not doing that any more. Readers also know that I like to get high, predominantly on K because it treats my clinical depression. It’s been legalized in Sweden for this very purpose and it suits me like a charm but... as the readers know, since no one ever sends me any, I have to do without most of the time. Occasionally I take something like Ayahuasca, Mimosa Hostilis or mushrooms; you can catch me at that if you come to the big solstice celebration in June. This doesn’t happen every week or every month. It doesn’t even happen every season. That is the extent of what I take, until the divine gets inclined to let me have a look at his Top Secret cabinet.

I have, like everyone, imbibed alcohol and like the t-shirt says, “instant -bad person-, just add alcohol” can apply. There’s a fine line between having a good time and others not sharing in it. I blame the location of the moon for the uncertainty feature that can appear. We’ve all gotten out of sorts and even landed in the fire once or twice. This is not about me doing that because that didn’t happen.

At the time of my visit to Don, Laura invited me over for dinner and Karaoke; they do that a lot, even though, as I remember, Laura is the only one who could sing. I got there and was seated at Laura’s left hand. We had a very nice chat. Laura can be very engaging when she wants to be and humanly fun. I liked her. There was a lot of wine and scotch around and I’ll admit that I got lit like everyone else. Some were more lit than I, which I was able to note at the time, which means I wasn’t so lit I couldn’t see what was going on.

We had a great time (I thought). I sang a few tunes as did Laura and I even harmonized with her on some of them. Her husband was there and I liked him too. He’s very sharp. You wouldn’t want to game that fellow. He played the piano, as I remember. I used to be and probably still am to some degree, a stand-up comedian. I was pretty good at it in a Lenny Bruce, George Carlin sort of a way. At least the audiences thought I was, or maybe they were being kind. One of the things I can do is take any popular song and change the lyrics. In this tedious thread over at SOTT, someone says I got really lewd and started talking about penises. Well, here’s exactly what happened. I did Wild Thing and changed the line “you make my heart sing” to “you make my thing sting”. That was the extent of it and everything else I have been reading from the SOTT forum ( a reader sent me a compilation) was like this, either terribly exaggerated or it didn’t even happen.

There’s a comment on there that ‘someone’ followed me into another room and observed me partaking of a substance. They don’t go into any details, probably because there weren’t any. I didn’t have anything to get high on that evening and was asking Don earlier about the possibility. There was pot around but I don’t care for pot. So I drank like everyone else, as God is my witness, I had no drugs, except I might have smoked a little pot at Don’s. Why would they lie like that? I admit to taking things to begin with.

I went back to SOTT the next day in the afternoon. A lot of the people were hung over and some mentioned it. When we were in the main living room again, I said something about let’s contact the Cassiopeans to Laura. So she got her Ouija board and... here I’ll admit that I expected nothing to happen and nothing it was. Somehow or other we got around to talking about the martial arts and it was a group back and forth and I wound up demonstrating, in slow motion, a few things. While this was happening, Laura’s youngest daughter started saying, over and over, “I can kick your ass”. I wasn’t comfortable demonstrating anyway so I sat back down. She kept saying it. I probably said, “Go ahead”. She didn’t. Susanne was with me the whole time and let me tell you; when I’m not behaving properly, Susanne WILL let me know. That didn’t happen once. She was as mystified as I by the growing undercurrent.

Someone at the forum said I didn’t know anything about the martial arts and someone said I did. There wasn’t much to get any real idea from anyway. Someone said I was being lascivious with Laura’s daughters. Have you seen them? Do you think I do inappropriate things right in front of Susanne; never mind that; whether she’s there or not? I might have been too casual through the whole affair. Instead of watching my every move, in hindsight it seems like I should have, I let myself enjoy these people and they looked like they were having fun too. What I have said here is the extent of the visit and all the rest of this static is lies and slander.

Afterwards, slowly, I noticed they didn’t print my work any more. I asked about it and was told it was because of a change in editors. I let it slide. One thing I noticed at this forum thread was that the fellow I was referring to in the recent Visible Origami posting showed up. How about that?

I haven’t always been on the mark with my behavior and this event was some years ago. I am a very much changed person since then but that’s immaterial. For some reason they are trying to paint me as a sinister and dark force. Why would they go public like this? Over the space of time, Laura and I have engaged in lengthy email exchanges. I’ve explained myself to her and pointed out that their use of alcohol makes them different from me only in the selection of their substances. Now it’s being said they don’t drink anymore, so they found Jesus. Good for them.

I haven’t gone after SOTT in my postings. I’ve got my feelings about this Cassiopeian thing but at the end of the day, I don’t know and that’s my stand on it.

I’m becoming more widely read and that’s going to accelerate too. It’s to be expected that different people will have different takes on me. I’m doing the best I can and I’m a work in progress. I don’t think badly about the SOTT people. I am disappointed that they would exaggerate and in some cases even lie. I don’t see the payoff with this. I don’t promote substances for others. My life is my life, you don’t like it, don’t be part of it.

It’s not necessary to make up things about someone. It’s okay not to like them. It’s not necessary for Laura to say I recommended Macrobiotics to her and that it nearly killed her, like I was behind that intention. I told her to begin with that she needed a competent advisor in respect of it. We’ve had extended email exchanges out of the blue and mostly initiated by her and they were friendly and informative. Meanwhile, I’ve always known about this other thing in the background. It surfaces every so often for no reason I can think of. We’re on different paths and all of us in the business of communicating to a larger public should keep that in mind. We are serving in our own way.

The reader has, by this time, got a pretty good idea of where I’m coming from and people are welcome to visit me and they do, without events of the order of what is being reported by this group, with the addition of that other fellow I mentioned. I’ll leave it to you to judge the reality of things and know that you, like myself, realize that the truth is usually somewhere between the conversations.

SOTT is a wealthy operation and shouldn’t be concerned with me, especially since I’m not concerned with them. Maybe I’m getting too popular for their tastes, since the readership keeps going up and all these new projects are about to be released. I suppose once you get to a certain level, this kind of thing is going to happen. It’s why I’ve always run from it before. Fame and fortune aren’t what they crack up to be. There’s a certain kind of disorder running around at the moment that is affecting various people in respect of what goes on here. Some of it is being engineered. I only hope they will develop some new love/hate interests and leave me be. There’s no future in hammering someone for no apparent reason. It can often come back on you in surprising ways, especially in these times.

End Transmission.......

[Guardian]

Readers also know that I like to get high, predominantly on K

Could someone please tell me what "K" is?  I feel terribly old and uncool asking, but I can't google a letter...well actually I can, and did, but I doubt he's snorting Kellogg's Rice Krispies?

Edited to add:  I just googled  "K" and "drug" and got "Ketamine"  Is that what he's talking about?

[anart]

Ketamine. 

It's bad news - he's got more demons hanging on than a bus on it's way to Crystal Cathedral.

[Guardian]

Ketamine. 

It's bad news - he's got more demons hanging on than a bus on it's way to Crystal Cathedral.

Geeezzzz...I'm reading about it now.    Well, if VB is really on his way out, he'll have to be replaced ...they always are.

[Guardian]

 

Ketamine blocks nerve paths without depressing respiratory and circulatory functions, and therefore acts as a reliable anaesthetic. This may turn you into a gibbering, spaced out bore, mumbling and slurring away while your dancing may begin to resemble Bill and Ben on acid. Your movements may become as swift as a spliffed-up tortoise crawling across an extra-sticky big bun on a very hot day. You may be unable to move at all.

[Guardian]

Forget understanding the "why" ...I don't even understand HOW these people can put all these things up their noses?  I can't brush the goats without sneezing my head off, but they seem able to get every noxious substance on the planet up their nostrils by the shovel full?  If I tried that I'd be spraying "K" coated snot all over the keyboard. 

[Heimdallr]

Ketamine. 

It's bad news - he's got more demons hanging on than a bus on it's way to Crystal Cathedral.

Yup, it's essentially a horse tranquilizer.  I've known a few people who were pretty heavily addicted to it.  And who knows what else is mixed into it when it's sold illicitly.