I have 2 questions for cassiopaeans

[Laura]

iloveyoghurt, I had a read through of all your posts thus far on this forum and I rather suspect that your attack - for that IS what it was - in "defense" of Howe was due to your own frustrations in not being able to get the responses you want to your own posts.

 

[iloveyoghurt]

Hi Laura,

For the sake of others that have things to say, I don't wish for this to drag out much further if possible, I've really said my peace, but yes, my defense of Howe came definitely from empathising with Howe's position, and I said just as much when I stated: "I see his/her perspective and level of query - perhaps from projection, as I have been in his situation."

I was giving feedback from how I have seen this happen in other postings, as well as experienced it myself. In my other posting I had a similar situation and found it very difficult to raise a simple enquiry of discussion, without receiving off-topic responses and advice that had little to do with my subject of enquiry, as well as assumptions that I hadn't read any of the material. It only served to blocked the flow of discussion. It was annoying and I can see how it might have been difficult for Howe, and others too that are new and feeling their way.

No attack. A whinge, and an honest expression of frustration, yes.

I got to go flea the cat now.

 

[truth seeker]

Hi iloveyogurt,

I was unable to find an intro for you. Perhaps I missed it. Did you happen to post one? :)

Will do this weekend truth seeker. No I didn't happen to post one as yet :)

Perhaps this post I wrote will help a bit. Try to keep in mind that not everything I wrote applies to you as I was answering someone specifically but take it more as a general guide in reference to the importance of posting an intro and understanding why we prompt members for one.

 

[Laura]

I think that post deserves to be reproduced here because it hits the nail on the head:

Mateo,
One of the reasons we ask everyone who is new to the forum to post an intro is so that they can receive information regarding the forum (what books we read, how the forum is run, etc). This is for your own benefit as well as everyone else's as it saves time and energy so that people don't have to keep asking and answering the same questions over and over again.

Jumping into discussions without first getting up to speed is similar to walking in the back door of a house as opposed to knocking on the front door. While you still end up in the house, you've shortchanged yourself of not getting a proper welcome and have missed the tour. You now spend your time asking where the bathrooms are and how the house is kept. All of this could have been avoided if you had just entered through the front door.

When first starting out with any group, it is externally considerate to find out how things are done so that everyone is on the same page and you get an idea if this is the place for you or not. How is it that you expect us to read what you have posted when you are showing that you're not interested in reading the material here? While this works both ways, as someone who is entering this group, the onus is on you to do the required reading first. This is what is asked of everyone here, why should you be any different?

While you may feel uncomfortable with the perceived attention you're getting, it is important to note that this is an opportunity for you to learn more about yourself and this forum if you choose to see it that way. Perhaps you felt uncomfortable posting and just decided to jump in here as you felt it would attract less attention? Now all your worst fears have come true. As I said above, if you had taken a little time to go through the usual channels, this situation would have been avoided.

Instead of storming away upset, why not take some time to post an intro and get a feel for the forum? No one will think less of you. Perhaps you will then come to find that this forum holds far more compassion than you realize.

Everybody gets the opportunity to read the Forum Guidelines when they sign up. I guess they think this is just a formality and they don't really have to read it. That is a BIG MISTAKE where this forum is concerned. Reading those guidelines and understanding exactly why this forum exists and what its purpose is can be crucial. As has been noted, it is not just a public free-for-all, it is privately owned and operated, though it is free to any and all who read and understand and agree with the guidelines.

 

[Buddy]

Something I've noticed from my own observations and it concerns the difference between 'newbies' and those who have been around awhile...a distinction which was recently pointed out on this thread.

Some of the 'Elders' here can correct me where I'm off, but one of the issues involved could probably be stated thusly:

How do you tell someone who is interpreting/distorting everything through their perceptual filters, that what they are doing (interpreting/distorting everything through their perceptual filters) is the very thing that is causing them their problem - because everything is being interpreted/distorted through their perceptual filters.

What typically follows from your attempt to explain (and you can see it in the response that follows your attempt) is that the person will interpret/distort THAT through their perceptual filters and will then accuse you of having accused them of being morally inferior, or "bad" human beings in their own childish language.

 

[Mountain Crown]

How do you tell someone who is interpreting/distorting everything through their perceptual filters, that what they are doing (interpreting/distorting everything through their perceptual filters) is the very thing that is causing them their problem - because everything is being interpreted/distorted through their perceptual filters.

Imagine a person with a severe case of cataracts wearing sunglasses. He stands in front of a mirror.

 

[Keit]

I was giving feedback from how I have seen this happen in other postings, as well as experienced it myself. In my other posting I had a similar situation and found it very difficult to raise a simple enquiry of discussion, without receiving off-topic responses and advice that had little to do with my subject of enquiry, as well as assumptions that I hadn't read any of the material. It only served to blocked the flow of discussion. It was annoying and I can see how it might have been difficult for Howe, and others too that are new and feeling their way.

H iloveyoghurt,

I think it depends on the attitude and approach of the person who's doing the inquiry, and if it fits into the purpose of this forum. The purpose of this forum is not mere interaction, but mainly research. It is also a school for those who would like to participate and contribute to the research according to the forum's guidelines. This is the main point that contributes to frustration of many who are ignoring or aren't making themselves aware enough of this point (by not reading the guidelines, for example) and assume that this forum is just like any other forum, even if a bit more intellectual.

For example, try to imagine if you would give the same response as above to the teacher in college who after hearing your question or inquiry would tell you to go home and do your homework first. Yes, you probably would be frustrated anyway, but wouldn't argue or see his actions as unfair. You would probably accept it, do you homework if you are serious about your studies, and later realize that your homework answered your question. Meaning, that your teacher has indeed helped you and has indeed answered your question, just not in the way you wanted it to be.

The same is happening on this forum. Since it is a learning environment, often things don't happen in the way we think they should, but in the way that has a potential to facilitate our growth. Those who are able to recognize it, make an effort (even if a small one) to do the homework and later benefit from it, and those who don't perhaps shouldn't be part of this school experience anyway, and if that is their choice. No hard feelings, just what it is.

 

[anart]

iloveyoghurt, I had a read through of all your posts thus far on this forum and I rather suspect that your attack - for that IS what it was - in "defense" of Howe was due to your own frustrations in not being able to get the responses you want to your own posts.

Yes, I see the same thing. iloveyoghurt is basically using Howe in order to 'get back' at what she/he perceives as unacceptable responses to her own posts. It's not at all about Howe - it's about iloveyoghurt.

 

[Gonzo]

Hi, iloveyoghurt,

I know you would love this portion of the discussion to go away, but I assure you it will not. There is too much information resulting from your post that would benefit other readers to cut it short. All is lessons, the best of which or also difficult, uncomfortable and even painful. This is part of being a warrior. Welcome to basic training - boot camp 101.

We don't discuss merely for discussion's sake, as you are hopefully seeing.

With respect to ganging up, I drew the sense from your use of the term, jumping on the bandwagon. If I somehow misinterpreted your intent, I apologize. You did use some very string and accusatory, emotional language, which is a "tell" to the reader of your emotional investment. This is definitely an area to look more into, as it is counterproductive to finding objective truths unless it is used to find such truths about yourself and utilized as fuel for the Work.

the analogy of a college works well here, with respect to people coming in with certain questions, beliefs and expectations. There are prerequisites to a course. Someone in primary school cannot walk into a university course and ask naïve questions, expecting the professor to stop the lecture and get the new student up to speed on the prerequisite knowledge.

When expectations aren't met, we learn a lot about a person by their reaction: if they get it right away versus getting defensive and trying to force the outcome to meet their expectation.

There are many debating society type forums out their in various levels of intellect and drive for objectivity. This is not one of them. When someone comes here expecting to see a debating society and the responses don't meet their expectation, their reactions are pointed out to them.

They then have the choice of finding a different forum that conforms more closely to their expectations, or they can drop their expectation at the door and shift their perceptions in accordance with the objectives and approached of this forum. The former is, in the collective mind of this forum, a distraction from waking up but it is not judged in any way beyond whether it serves our objectives or not. Decisions to stay or go are also not judged, although there is a lot of love here and it is often felt a pity when witnessing inability or unwillingness to awaken. But we are keenly aware the majority of mankind are snoozing in deep sleep and they are not judged here.
If you are interested in sticking around, in dropping your initial expectations and shifting your perceptions to align with this forum, you would do well to take time to reread the forum guidelines and then take a look at your postings to date with an eye toward how they fit or don't fit within the forum's objectives and approaches.

This is quite difficult. We know one cannot think about the way one thinks with the way one thinks. A network of collinear individuals is the best way forward so that the way one thinks can be revealed through thoughtful feedback. And that was all that was happening with howe as well.

For an exercise, take a look at this extracted paragraph from your response to me and take note of the accusatory and emotional language, take note of assumptions you may have made in error, see if you can identify a few programs running your thoughts:

but to answer you Vulcan, I see that that 's what Laura did initially, ie, pointed out to a member that a newbie here cannot possibly know "external consideration", and I thought that was great to see - it really seemed to be going out of control (the bullying) and I was cringing for poor Howe. But then later she dug the boots in (joined the bandwagon) with the comment: "Too bad that way of getting knowledge does not seem to be serving you well as your complete misunderstanding of nearly everything said so far indicates." And this was only in response to him not understanding that her initial comment was directed at correcting the other member

I personally hope you are able to take what is transpiring as an essential step to falling out of the traps that your predator mind has set for you, as it ultimately blinds you and buffers you considerably from experiencing a fuller existence, OSIT. The more of us on a path of awakening, the better it is for all of humanity.

Gonzo

 

[truth seeker]

How do you tell someone who is interpreting/distorting everything through their perceptual filters, that what they are doing (interpreting/distorting everything through their perceptual filters) is the very thing that is causing them their problem - because everything is being interpreted/distorted through their perceptual filters.

What typically follows from your attempt to explain (and you can see it in the response that follows your attempt) is that the person will interpret/distort THAT through their perceptual filters and will then accuse you of having accused them of being morally inferior, or "bad" human beings in their own childish language.

To me, there wasn't only misunderstandings resulting from the responses given to Howe but also some misunderstandings coming from his own posts. The issue there was not so much misinterpretations stemming from his/her own narcissistic wounding (because we all do this from time to time) but rather the unwillingness or inability to face those issues. It felt too unsafe.

If someone is not willing or able to really take a look at themselves, there is really very little that can be done to help them. There must be something in them that feels they are worthy enough to fight for and have the desire and capacity to do it.

 

[Buddy]

I understand and agree with everything said so far (and Jerry, thanks for that useful analogy :)).

 

[Nienna]

I have something to say here.........


reading this post has left me aghast at the lack of care and plain bullying that has taken place.

This poor person, Howe, has some questions that he/she is courageously sharing with earnest and sincerity, and has received nothing but plain bullying in return.

I have seen it before on this site and it's a plain disgrace.

I'm sorry, I do not see the bullying. What I see are people trying to answer Howe's questions and help him/her to not get caught up in an entropic situation.

Assumptions that this person has not read "the recommended material" that they are not doing "the work" and accusations that they are full of self importance, followed by a continual barrage of unsolicited advice that had nothing to do with the initial questioning they began the post with - ie, that is all off topic.

I think that you may be projecting here. You seem to be fairly emotional about this. Could it be that some corns have been stepped on?

Nienna Eluch, you are obviously quite a young person

Wrong, but thank you for the compliment.

and I can make some allowance, but I have come across you before in a discussion (see Qs to the Cs about cancer and aids), and I experienced nothing but awful self righteousness and self importance from you, just as this person Howe has had to contend with. Even when Howe politely requests to end this thread so that there will be no confusions, you continue to disregard his request in place of your own predator mind's desire to overpower him, steam rolling him again, to gratify your own need to feed your self importance and righteousness. Incredibly rude, and you really ought to pull your head in.

It seems that I have stepped on some corns. And it does seem that you are projecting. I have reread my post above and I see that I acknowledged that what he was doing was good, but not the whole banana. That he needs to be careful with hearing voices talking to him while meditating because they could just be the bad guys. I think that you have a "be nice" program running. When one has a "be nice" program running, they tend to think that actually helping a person by saying things that WILL help them is wrong. That it is better to tell the person how good they are doing, how wonderful it is that they are doing it. And then, when something bad happens because this person wasn't given the information needed, all they can say is something like, "Oh, I am so sorry." Well a lot of good that does.

I feel for you Howe, I hear exactly and clearly where you are at. There is no misunderstanding there. I am saddened that these other people have let this whole Cs experience run away with them. It happens all the time in this world - religion is a prime example, whereby, a certain few become self righteous and all knowing, and push their own agenda onto others, without the compassion and empathy that is the underlying and true message of whatever doctrine they are advocating for.

Like I said, I am aghast and really feel for you Howe.

Laura, you ought to know better, and really should consider pulling some of your people into line. This is not how it is supposed to be at all.

So I have to ask. Why are you at this forum? Do you realize that this forum is based on the 4th way concepts and Laura's materials? This is why we suggest to people to read these things, those and the many books in the recommended reading list. Because this is not a game. The world is burning. There is no time for "be nice" programs when we are trying to help as many people as possible. I understand how hard it is for people who are not acquainted with Laura's and Gurdjieff's works to understand just what is going on here. That is why we suggest the recommended reading list.

If you are unhappy with this forum, then maybe you would be better off at one where you will be happy. There is one out there for everyone.

It's, of course, up to you.

 

[Gonzo]

There have been an excellent comments on this thread and I want to thank those who have contributed as much a I want to thank howe, for starting it. Many threads veer far from the original poster's intent or desired outcome, but I find that phenomenon similar to asking for something from the Divine Cosmic Mind only to have something come that was the farthest thing from my expectation.

The universe knows more about what we need than our minds can conjure up, OSIT.

An experiment I recently did to help me with subjective reading of people's posts, is to read once through as if the person were angry. It's amazing how certain phrasing takes on a different energy. Then, I read it as if the poster was speaking without any emotion.

When I read, I hear the words as a voice in my head reading aloud (sure hope I'm not the only one - I imagine speed readers might not though). When I assume anger, for example I can hear specific tones rising and falling at points in a sentence, emphasis, being placed on certain words, there's a certain cadence or rhythm to it. When I read as if there were no emotion, the voice is in monotone with fairly equal spacing between words within a sentence.

I have imagined a few emotions and I tell you, I am a little surprised with what my mind adds to the intent of the author.

When I first started lurking on this forum, I experienced a few cringing moments when I too perceived harsh judgment and treatment of certain individuals. I was, however, fortunate to have held back my desire to actually sign up and comment, only to soon see someone else react in the way I was feeling. That was then followed by others pointing out how the person was identifying and projecting and I immediately applied the feedback to myself as well.

That was the beginning of this wonderful leg of my journey of self discovery and I have to say, after a good 25 years of trying to work on myself and constantly running into lessons where I would see myself doing the very thing for which someone else was being corrected, those on this forum who can see and make their observations known have helped me (vicariously) more in a few short years that all of those years before.

I trust this forum. I trust the observations, and I have deep faith that if someone's observations might be off, they will soon have that pointed out as well.
If howe and iloveyogurt are still reading, I ask that you merely test this system. Give yourself up to it for a few weeks and if you don't or cannot find yourself moving forward in ways that were previously inaccessible, this is just not your time or place. It says nothing about your soul or the quality of the you beneath the many yous, it just is and no one here will qualify it one way or another.

You have nothing to loose and so much to gain, in my experience.

Gonzo

 

[Buddy]

I have imagined a few emotions and I tell you, I am a little surprised with what my mind adds to the intent of the author.

Same here. I've done some experimenting along other lines as well.

For example, seeing this:

Laura, you ought to know better, and really should consider pulling some of your people into line. This is not how it is supposed to be at all.

It appears to me that this is the crux of the matter from the point of view of my own self-observations. A bunch of my personal Work is also 'language Work' and has been quite revealing. With me I would call the above statement evidence of "double-projection."

The first projection could be described as the normal biological job of the human nervous system to externalize a coherent experience of all the visual and other sensory bits that flood our nervous system. The nervous system then projects 'outward' so that something/anything can be 'seen' and reacted to.

The second projection is due to all the visual and other sensory bits also having to be filtered through the belief and assumption system before being projected outwards with the 'real' image/experience. This juxtaposition provides the "two things" that are necessary to form any conclusion about what one is seeing and is likely the basis for distinguishing "perceiving" from "seeing", OSIT.

It appears to be a rather seamless operation actually, but one's own body language can clue one in that one is reacting in the real environment the same way that one's 'analog I' is reacting in the internal/mental metaphoric landscape because both are being projected simultaneously when 'reacting' is going on, OSIT.

All you have to do is ask for some kind of feedback before 'reacting'.

At least this is my current understanding and is subject to modification as I learn more. :)

 

[Gonzo]

Bud,
Thanks for pointing out the double-projection. I find it always helps to see an example before I can understand a concept and with your explanation of both the physiological and psychological forms of projection, this really clicked.
It does makes me have to think even deeper now when self observing to separate the nature versus nurture and that's a good thing. Much food for thought for me as I continue with the laboratory in my head. :)

Gonzo