Self-Observation, Inner Talking & Work Instrument

[T.C.]

Hi Team,

Just wondering if someone can point me in the right direction please?

I seem to remember reading a discussion where Laura describes physical symptoms of 'heating and cooling' or more specifically- perceived elevated temperature combined with sensations of extreme cold in the pit of the stomach?

I'm sure it was on the forum somewhere, either in reference to the Moving or Magnetic Centres but I can't seem to find it....

Any assistance much appreciated.

Thanks

J

I think Laura talked about that in The Wave. But there is this thread where Laura writes a post that talks about the process of fusion, and that "real warmth" is produced by the inner friction:

Depression As A Stepping Stone (to Soul Growth)

 

[gnosisxsophia]

I think Laura talked about that in The Wave. But there is this thread where Laura writes a post that talks about the process of fusion, and that "real warmth" is produced by the inner friction:

Depression As A Stepping Stone (to Soul Growth)

Thanks for the reply T.C, the Depression thread happened to be very relatable.

Yes I was starting to wonder if it might not have been Amazing Grace or The Wave?

Must be time time to read them again

Cheers

J

 

[Plum]

Excellent read it was!

 

[MarcusAurelius]

Among the raw G and few others who seem to offer written forms of his vibe, like M and O, I enjoy Nicoll's commentaries which kicked this off. I'm fascinated with this thread but won't beef up the volume of it now and be direct - I'm curious if anyone has experience working with a master like Sanford Meisner doing basic repetition with a partner before a group, perhaps even capturing the live interaction on film with a couple of cameras. In reflection over many years of my quest, my wandering since childhood, I've used art, therapy and reality interactively to hone in on something that seems to be the foundation beneath it all.

 

[ELT]

But I'm not sure what Gurdjieff means when he says "...but imagine only, that this is already present in you." He seems to be referring to an understanding ridden of all doubt what must be done and how - but I just cannot conceive how this is possible, unless it refers to smaller aims.

It’s been 17 years since this post, water has run under bridges, I’ll just add my block to the castle (making my contribution).

First of all, thanks for everything.

The way I perceived it is in connection to Visualization and setting the Intention/the Direction. From my understanding, setting the intention is a way to use the left brain hemisphere properly in order to give ourselves a direction, while letting the creative force of the right brain hemisphere free to modulate the present, according to "DCM’s will". I understand the « Imagine only » as meaning that it is the first task = ‘feeling it’ in the present ; and that at the same time 'imagining' doesn’t mean that we master it, yet. So let’s not take it as accomplished either.

(This makes me think about The Thinking Errors Characteristic Of The Criminal :
« 36. Super Optimism : […] Once this decision is made the criminal will believe that change has already accrued. »)

So the next step is to practice and set ourselves in motion.

I refer here, notably, to this excerpt from the wave chap.23, present in the book Life Is Religion :

Laura Knight-Jadczyk, The Wave, Chapter 23 (excerpt)

What is wrong with efforts to send love and light, the achieving of the goals of world peace or personal prosperity? What is wrong with wanting a return to God, or higher consciousness or any of the touted experiences that are guaranteed to initiate a person to whatever they desire? The problem is anticipation. When you seek any of these things by holding the thoughts in the left-brain in anticipation of making it real, you are raping the maiden of the well.

What if you are just trying to believe it is now? Belief is a function of the left brain; it blocks the manifestation of creativity because the creative right brain is also the empirical half of the brain that observes the dichotomy between the belief and the reality.

Desire is anticipation. Anticipation is read by the right brain as in the future, therefore not right now, and the right brain can only create now. When we desire, we have a future object in mind. The right brain only knows now.

If we desire to love God, we have a concept (left brain) of the future goal of loving God. It can’t exist now. Therefore we experience struggle to constantly love God, against the ongoing now of not loving God.

If we desire to win the lottery, and produce in the left brain future image of money flowing into our life, it isn’t now. So now continues moneyless.

If we desire happiness, and create the concept in the left brain, we have future happiness in mind. And the right brain reads it as unhappiness now, and this can manifest in thousands of unhappy experiences.

By the same token, if we send love and light to any directed recipient, we are holding a concept of future fixing that signals a state of brokenness now to our right brain, and the repercussions are felt in our life. In a larger sense, we may be signaling the collective right brain that a future state of peace is desired, and therefore, now is not peaceful. And so the right brain creates now. The perception of linear time constantly projects rewards into the future, blocking access to the present, like a donkey chasing a carrot for all eternity.

Q: (L) If someone wanted to win the lottery, for example, what would be the correct approach? What should they do, or be, or think, or say?
A: Completely pure intent, i.e., open. Nonanticipatory.
Q: (L) Anticipation constricts the channels of creativity?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) A person has to be completely uncaring whether they get it or not, so to speak?
A: Happy-go-lucky attitude helps.
Q: (L) So, worry, tension, anticipation, and attachment to the idea, we constricts the flow?
A: Yes.

But you noticed, I hope, that intent is not considered to be anticipation or desire. The words themselves may provide a clue.

Anticipate: ante—before + capare—to take. To look forward to; to expect; to make happen earlier, precipitate; to foresee and perform in advance, etc.

We see clearly the connection between anticipation and time.

Intent: firmly directed or fixed; having the mind or attention firmly directed or fixed; engrossed; strongly resolved; a purpose or objective; will and determination at the time of performing an act.

Do we see a subtle difference? Even if it is somewhat semantically, it is sufficient to make us think about how to deal with our creative potential.

Of course, we see that completely pure intent is a pretty tall order. Thus we see that the key becomes acting now with intent, but no imaginary anticipation for the future. A goal, with applied will of action, which necessitates left brain conscious preparing and planning, via the heightened awareness of the right brain, which deals directly with the present conditions, will result in an opening of life changing creative potential.

Q: (L) Okay, we’ve been talking earlier this evening about intent, and of course, our own experiences with intent have really been pretty phenomenal. We’ve come to some kind of an idea that intent, when confirmed repeatedly, actually builds force. Is this a correct concept, and is there anything that you can add to it?
A: Only until anticipation muddies the picture … tricky one, huh?
Q: (L) Is anticipation the act of assuming you know how something is going to happen?
A: Follows realization, generally, and unfortunately for you, on 3rd density. You see, once anticipation enters the picture, the intent can no longer be STO.
Q: (L) Anticipation is desire for something for self. Is that it?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Okay, so it’s okay to intend something, or to think in an intentional way, or to hope in an intentional way, for something that is to serve another …
A: And that brings realization. But, realization creates anticipation.
Q: (L) Well, how do we navigate this razor? I mean, this is like walking on a razor’s edge. To control your mind to not anticipate, and yet, deal with realization, and yet, still maintain hope …
A: Mental exercises of denial, balanced with pure faith of a nonprejudicial kind.
Q: (L) Okay, so, in other words, to just accept what is at the moment, appreciate it as it is at the moment, and have faith that the universe and things will happen the way they are supposed to happen, without placing any expectation on how that will be, and keep on working?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) We have discussed a lot of concepts about shaping the future. In our discussions, we have hypothesized that it is something like an intentional act of shaping something good, but without defining the moment of measurement. In other words, adding energy to it by intent, but not deciding where, when or how the moment of measurement occurs. Like a quantum jump: you know it is statistically likely, but not definite, so you cannot expect it, but you observe so that you can notice when it occurs on it’s own, and in it’s own way.
A: Yes. Avoiding anticipation. That is the key to shaping the future … When it hits you, it stops.
Q: (L) When what hits you? The fact that it’s happening? That you are doing it?
A: Yes unless you cancel out all anticipation.
Q: (L) Well, this is very tricky.
A: Ah? We have doubts … And yes, you create your own reality!
Q: (L) Well, but you have also said that anticipation messes things up, and so I don’t want to have any anticipation.
A: Anticipation is not creating one’s own reality.

If non-anticipation opens the door to the creativity of the universe, what closes the door to negative occurrences? Can it be that we have a clue here as well?

Just remember that anticipation is the “mother of preparation”, and defense.

Lesson number 1: always expect attack.
Lesson number 2: know the modes of same.
Lesson number 3: know how to counteract same.

When you are under attack, expect the unexpected, if it is going to cause problems … But, if you expect it, you learn how to “head it off”, thus neutralizing it. This is called vigilance, which is rooted in knowledge. Knowledge protects. (The Cassiopaeans)

So, it seems that the answer to this part of the problem is that when we are connected to the Cosmos via the right brain, and are not blocking the ability of our Cosmic Connection by limiting the forces with boundary forming imagination or images or illusory concepts, we allow the perfect manifestation of our own frequency resonance to occur. By the same token, when necessary, we can close the door to manipulation of our minds by constantly running a sort of computer scan of possible breaches of our security system in the left brain. We must marry the left brain kingship of the material world to the right brain queen of the inner realm.

Yet, it was only when Parzival rejected all of the advice, the exhortations, when he quit seeking to be a great knight on a sacred quest to save the world; only when he rejected God as the pure and good all-father that … it found him.

What is the wasteland? That we cannot accept the world and all within it, including ourselves, as being perfectly natural and perfect just the way it is — with all the good and evil it contains as part of the natural and necessary balance — the whole of existence is natural and as it should be at every moment. When you accept that all is perfect, when you cease holding God hostage by usurping the power of the right brain feminine principle with the images in your left brain, then the world will be perfect and fertile and you will heal the wound of the wasteland in your own heart.

If only we can act spontaneously, without being programmed into someone else’s belief system, we can ask the real question of ourselves; ask with no preconceived notion of what the answer will be; ask with no anticipation.

Then, miraculously, for one moment the vessel of the Grail is empty … and in the next it is filled with the wonder and glory of all and everything.

The Spirit of the Valley never dies. It is called the Mystic Female. The Door of the Mystic Female is the root of Heaven and Earth. (Lao Tzu)

And the Mystic Female is the infinite Sea of potential. It is God in the not aspect that only can be when expectations, anticipations, assumptions and obsessions are completely left at the door.

Negative existence is the silence behind the sound, the blank canvas beneath the painting, the darkness into which light shines. Emptiness is the stillness against which time moves. Negative existence enables a man to be what he is. It is the mirror of mirrors. Non-anticipation is noninterference, and allows the most perfect reflection of creation. (Lao Tzu)

This next excerpt you cited from Henry goes this way.

They are lies until we develop the Will that will realize our potential to BE.

So when Gurdjieff said we should imagine that it is already present in us, he seems to be suggesting that it IS established somewhere (as in, the higher centers are fully functional) and that this more or less constant imagination can in a sense be used as a driving/steering force towards actualising it.

You stated it.

 

[ELT]

The way I perceived it is in connection to Visualization and setting the Intention/the Direction. From my understanding, setting the intention is a way to use the left brain hemisphere properly in order to give ourselves a direction, while letting the creative force of the right brain hemisphere free to modulate the present, according to "DCM’s will". I understand the « Imagine only » as meaning that it is the first task = ‘feeling it’ in the present ; and that at the same time 'imagining' doesn’t mean that we master it, yet. So let’s not take it as accomplished either.

From the Gurdjieff's Contemplative Exercises thread, this excerpt deepens the idea on the use of imagination :

whitecoast said:

Chapter Eight is about what was called the First Assisting Exercise in the fifth talk of the Third Series, dated to 1930.

In this talk, after Gurdjieff makes positive reference to one's human capacity for "self-deceptive imaginativeness" to inculcate "in his subconsciousness some reasonable indication grasped by his ordinary consciousness and not contradictory to his instinct." Azize seems to tie this role that imaginative visualization may play in developing an actual sensitivity to something real and not at all imaginative to one of Gurdjieff's motivations for withholding a number of these types of exercises: because very often imagination is uncontrolled and subject to all kinds of self-deception and self-hypnosis and can lead people into deeper blink alleys than their ordinary sleep.

For the correct understanding of the significance of this first assisting exercise, it is first of all necessary to know that when a normal man, that is, a man who already has his real I, his will, and all the other properties of a real man, pronounces aloud or to himself the words " I am," then there always proceeds in him, in his, as it is called, "solar plexus," a so to say "reverberation," that is, something like a vibration, a feeling, or something of the sort.

This kind of reverberation can proceed also in other parts of his body in general, but only on the condition that, when pronouncing these words, his attention is intentionally concentrated on them.

If the ordinary man, not having as yet in himself data for the natural reverberation but knowing of the existence of this fact, will, with conscious striving for the formation in himself of the genuine data which should be in the common presence of a real man, correctly and frequently pronounce these same and for him as yet empty words, and will imagine that this same reverberation proceeds in him, he may thereby ultimately through frequent repetition gradually acquire in himself a so to say theoretical "beginning" for the possibility of a real practical forming in himself of these data.

He who is exercising himself with this must at the beginning, when pronouncing the words "I am," imagine that this same reverberation is already proceeding in his solar plexus.

[Emphasis mine]