Acknowledged Lies

[andi]

I have acknowledged a dangerous lie towards myself and I also know there are many people that are doing just the same, so I'll share.

When I read posts or articles, less so with books, I, for many of them, just read superficially or scan in searching for appealing or interesting words or thoughts, or simply go too fast through them.
Other times, or in the same time, I assume that I either understand what the person is talking about, and that it does or it does not interest me.

Then, of course, me feels like I am entitled to pass a comment and have an opinion on just about everything anyone sais- This one passes for the most part under the radar, considering (lying really) that it is just my trying to make sens of things and trying to better understand the matter (justification, witch is just another lie)

You can add to the list - there are so many more that just pass under the radar as being just one's generous nature and genuine desire to understand the truth. Even if the genuine desire is however present, if one succeed in getting to be identified with his genuine generosity and sincerity, it might happen that you dupe your selves and believe a lie to be of truth -at witch point you get screwed.

All this and other ones related are just damn lies, lies and more lies.

Feel free to add.


edit: added

 

[Nawd]

Can you be more specific? I'm not understanding what you are saying.

Who is being dishonest and about what and who is 'going under the radar'.

Please be more clear of what you are asking?

 

[Buddy]

andi can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he's working toward the idea or realization that we tend to understand things just anyhow (a Gurdjieff remark) and that even our thoughts are not our own, though what seems to be our genuine desire to learn the truth about something can lead us to believe in them (lies).

andi, please correct me where I'm off.

 

[andi]

Can you be more specific? I'm not understanding what you are saying.

Who is being dishonest and about what and who is 'going under the radar'.

Please be more clear of what you are asking?

Sorry Dawn for the misunderstanding, language is still a barrier for me. What passes under the radar are lies and lies pass under the radar because of justifications to our selfs made in good nature thinking we are working - as Bud said, it is paraphrasing G.
So for me reading superficially(when I decide I am not interested to read everything a person has posted) is just one of those lies that pass under the radar.
If there is anything else that I need to clear up, please ask away.

andi can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he's working toward the idea or realization that we tend to understand things just anyhow (a Gurdjieff remark) and that even our thoughts are not our own, though what seems to be our genuine desire to learn the truth about something can lead us to believe in them (lies).

andi, please correct me where I'm off.

Spot on, thanks. ;)



edit: added

 

[andi]

Dawn, I read it a couple of times and I'm having trouble to look at what I wrote from an outside point of view.
If you can direct me and explain where there is misunderstanding, I will gladly re-write the post for clarity.
Thanks in advanced.

 

[Nawd]

Dawn, I read it a couple of times and I'm having trouble to look at what I wrote from an outside point of view.
If you can direct me and explain where there is misunderstanding, I will gladly re-write the post for clarity.
Thanks in advanced.

Bud clarified a good deal with the direction towards what Gurdjieff has said. It seems to be just a language barrier. I had a difficult time figuring out what exactly you were asking. Seems to be you were stating a point. Thanks for the clarifications.

So are you saying that the 'devil is in the details?' And if it's not acknowledged, it is similar to lying to oneselve because it's an 'under the radar' type of agreement where someone doesn't exactly understand what is being said, but simply responds to respond thus lying to themselves?

 

[andi]

I had a difficult time figuring out what exactly you were asking. Seems to be you were stating a point.

Yes is was a statement. Now I think I understand where the confusion was coming from.


[quote author=Dawn]
So are you saying that the 'devil is in the details?' And if it's not acknowledged, it is similar to lying to oneselve because it's an 'under the radar' type of agreement where someone doesn't exactly understand what is being said, but simply responds to respond thus lying to themselves?
[/quote]

Yep. And once a lie is accepted, because it passes undetected, then more lies get tangled in without us being aware of them( like the snow ball effect. ) -thus feeding our selfs with more and more lies believing we are holding truth thus creating what G calls crystallization on the wrong foundation and what Muravieff calls absorbing A influences believing we are actually absorbing B influences.

 

[Nawd]

I had a difficult time figuring out what exactly you were asking. Seems to be you were stating a point.

Yes is was a statement. Now I think I understand where the confusion was coming from.


[quote author=Dawn]
So are you saying that the 'devil is in the details?' And if it's not acknowledged, it is similar to lying to oneselve because it's an 'under the radar' type of agreement where someone doesn't exactly understand what is being said, but simply responds to respond thus lying to themselves?

Yep. And once a lie is accepted, because it passes undetected, then more lies get tangled in without us being aware of them( like the snow ball effect. ) -thus feeding our selfs with more and more lies believing we are holding truth thus creating what G calls crystallization on the wrong foundation and what Muravieff calls absorbing A influences believing we are actually absorbing B influences.
[/quote]

I agree! This is very common in all types of relationships (from personal ones, to political or religious -anything in between). Accepting one lie, is accepting many of them, and it goes on from there. It then begains to be easier to accept whatever is told because that 'polarity' is already established. And to untangle takes a heck of a lot of Work once you realize you've been duped. Not even by just one thing, but a million.

Thanks! I enjoyed pondering this. :)

(Plus I'm guilty of doing that very thing -several times in my life.)

 

[Possibility of Being]

Reading is similar to listening: either you are open to the other person or you are only looking for confirmation of what you already know, rejecting/ignoring everything else. Alternatively, it can be looking for a way to defend yourself or your take on things. It's basically being the center of the universe. So it is understandable you have to cover it up somehow, i.e. you have to lie to yourself.

As I wrote in another thread, Jacob Needleman talks about listening quite a bit. Although he means mainly situations when one person passionately disagrees with the other, I think his point and exercises he offers are still valid in other cases. You may enjoy watching this YouTube video: Why Bother Listening to Opinions You Disagree With?

Andi, how does it feel to catch yourself on this kind of lying?

--
Added: Just found a description of that Needleman's lecture posted by Approaching Infinity here.

 

[andi]

Andi, how does it feel to catch yourself on this kind of lying?

--

Thanks for asking that question, Possibility of Being.

I could not completely answer that question without giving some background.

I began to have too many conflicting thoughts(I's) and the amount of pressure almost had me quit.
So I had to either do something about it of just let it all go. So I started to re-evaluate myself and the only way I could do it was to recapitulate and find what specifically was causing this contradictions to amount to such degree.

After a week of reading books on the WORK, a thought crosses my mind - the thought was very strong almost forceful. I had decided that I'll close myself to everything around me and only work physically all day, day after day, until I feel that something has fused in me - and only then I'll come out to resume.
(this is what Mr. Orage was doing when he finally said that his intellectual life had lead him nowhere and decided to join G's group in France [ book -The Struggle of The Magicians])

I was convinced and I was enthusiast of this "hard-on-the-self idea", so I stood up as to start right away. At that moment I started to tremble and and was reminded of the advice I have been given on the forum on being less hard on myself, etc. I sat down to rethink it and see if there is something else I want to say before I start.

I don't know what got me but I asked myself something like: "what do I like?" and THERE I received a huge personality shock. I realized that what I was about to do (to close myself and only do only physical work) was the biggest TRICK my false-personality was about to play one me. I actually was choosing to do something that I was capable of doing and that would not actually upset my little I's.

What I was really fearful, my biggest fears - I was avoiding at all costs - was, opening up to people.

This was my first direct and real feeling of something inside me that really wanted to see me fail, that wanted me harm - it was my false-personality - that witch I call myself, that witch I identify with and that witch has thoughts and has reasons and takes decisions for me- all witch is in reality just the predator mind trying to kill me. I "was" a lie, I "was" a machine -and only lies can come out of machines said G.

I started to make notes in all my notebooks because I new by the morning the predator mind would work something up.
I did not know what to do next - I was scared to have thoughts.

So I started reading the forum very attentively and without having any opinions and leave my reasons aside and just try to understand what people are saying.

What fallowed was remarkable. I had a big argument with my dad that night on my self-importance. I argued firely and defensively yet I was not identified with the talk - I was somewhat detached in feeling. After it was over, nothing could bother me - usually I would fume for hours. I even tried to get angry at what he had said but it didn't work.

And here I think, is the power of giving people their due and interestingly enough the video you presented,Possibility of Being, was close to my experience but in some-want different way.


That is what prompted me to start this thread.
Thanks a lot for listening to this. ;)

 

[Buddy]

I had a big argument with my dad that night on my self-importance. I argued firely and defensively yet I was not identified with the talk - I was somewhat detached in feeling. After it was over, nothing could bother me - usually I would fume for hours.

andi, could you talk more about this? It might be helpful to me and others. Who was saying what to who?

The main reason I ask is because I wanted to see if it was like an argument I once had with someone. Essentially, even though the "argument" could be viewed as "negative", it felt like my emotional center was having it's genuine expression of "righteous anger" so to speak, and the correct words just came out to fully express myself with no regrets or confusion or backtracking.

I also felt detached and that's probably helped with the verbal part, because I wasn't at all concerned with what might follow.

This only happened once, though, and I was defending someone else who was in the right rather than myself, so I'd be interested in comparing experiences with you if you could without sharing anything too personal.

Thanks, andi, and if this is out of line somehow, someone please let me know. :)

 

[Roland J. Prather]

just to add a bit: many times we force ourselves to do something when honestly we are not interested. This is not learning but if you want to learn find an article that is interesting and keep doing this. And this can be a springboard to enhance your drive for a broader interest in categories of articles. its about finding your center on things and expanding form there. You'll natural expand with effort. Your creativity demands you attention of its unique expression to a whole. I know this sounds elementary but it helps I guess if it helps

 

[andi]

just to add a bit: many times we force ourselves to do something when honestly we are not interested. This is not learning but if you want to learn find an article that is interesting and keep doing this. And this can be a springboard to enhance your drive for a broader interest in categories of articles. its about finding your center on things and expanding form there. You'll natural expand with effort. Your creativity demands you attention of its unique expression to a whole. I know this sounds elementary but it helps I guess if it helps

Hi JP, I think I understand what you are saying. In general, I mostly do only the things that I like, including the Work witch my ego takes a certain pride. What happens is that I shy away from the things I do not like finding reasons not to do them, and this shying away is what holds me back form uncovering anything new about my machine. It is in fact what makes me a machine. This may sound like a dry explanation of what is going one now. Thanks for your advice.

 

[andi]

andi, could you talk more about this? It might be helpful to me and others. Who was saying what to who?

The main reason I ask is because I wanted to see if it was like an argument I once had with someone. Essentially, even though the "argument" could be viewed as "negative", it felt like my emotional center was having it's genuine expression of "righteous anger" so to speak, and the correct words just came out to fully express myself with no regrets or confusion or backtracking.

Bud, for me the detachment doesn't seem to be similar to what you have said above. What I was saying was not particularly correct, I was defending my ego because he always turns the cards towards religion and how my pride was going to kill me and that I should stop having pride if I am to make this life worth.
I was trying to signal to him that that I was doing just that and that it nearly "killed" me. And then we went into details and "traveled roads" going away form the subject and coming back.

I felt detached because I kind of knew what I was standing for - I knew better what was going on inside me and I didn't feel the need to reinforce my opinion as I usually do. However I was fighting for my rights, sort of, because he was pushing the cards, wanting to teach me life.

With all that, I was at the same time attached, at the same time detached or better say relaxed but attacking.

I also felt detached and that's probably helped with the verbal part, because I wasn't at all concerned with what might follow.

It was a bit like that.


Bud, since I find it hard to describe exactly the exchange we had, I have just described the overall atmosphere. If you want me to elaborate on it, I will gladly do it. If you have any other questions, please do.

Mod Edit: Fixed quotes

 

[andi]

[quote author=andi]I had a big argument with my dad that night on my self-importance. I argued firely and defensively yet I was not identified with the talk - I was somewhat detached in feeling. After it was over, nothing could bother me - usually I would fume for hours.[/quote]

My theory on this is this. I had been paying attention all day long to what people had to say here on the forum- so I was opened and was listening rather then rationalizing everything with my baroque mind. (not that I always do that...)
So when the argument with Dad fallowed, I was still in that state throughout the conversation. I think that is what helped, I think that is way the detachment was there also.

Like in the video shared by Possibility of Being, listening with the desire to understand and learn is a profound experience.