Mr. Gurdjieff said:
"When you go on spree go the entire hog, including the postage."
I write these words to pay for what I stole. I understand more of Mr. Gurdjieff’s cryptic response to Mourvieff’s query as to the origin of Mr. Gurdjieff’s teachings. He famously responded, “I stole the teaching.” Perhaps, we each must take for ourselves, the cubic centimeter of chance the universe dangles in front of us on rare occasion.
I recently posted a variety of mechanical reactions to Daniel Kahneman’s accumulated knowledge on this thread. It is inconsiderate for a drunken driver to take the horse drawn carriage out on the road late at night. The runaway horses take roads into bad neighborhoods. Thanks to developing trust of the forum and its moderation, I took the opportunity to let the horses run to develop material for real work effort.
Mullah Nassr Eddin in Beelzebub’s Tales said:
“One can never know who might help you to get out of galoshes.”
Anart’s description of go2’s state as petulant did the trick. The drunken driver go2 woke up at the strange descriptor…petulant. Petulant is a negative emotion mingling anger and self-pity into a new and unrecognized negative state. After waking up a little and finding the mute button, I began to use the work to examine the entire context of the go2’s petulant spree.
I studied go2’s mechanical reaction to Daniel Kahneman’s famous Nobel Prize Lecture. If I have a negative emotional reaction, it is some facet of go2’s machine I have not observed, accepted, or acknowledged. Why was I angered by his speech? What had I not seen, acknowledged, and accepted in the go2 machine, which now projected out onto the world so strongly? I took Daniel Kahneman’s inventory and put my name at the bottom of the page. He is an arrogant mechanical know-it-all. That is go2, an arrogant know-it-all automatic reaction machine criticizing Daniel Kahneman’s machine.
It is interesting to experience the negative emotional reaction to other’s machines vanish when I see identical machine parts in my inner world; hidden behind the reflecting buffers, projecting the dark unconscious machine protocols onto the mechanical world and its mechanical people. I cannot hate what I understand. The experience of annoyance, anger, petulance, fear etc. of other people’s machines is fertile soil to examine the workings of the go2 machine. The phenomenon of criticizing others for what I am myself is called hypocrisy in the work. I now have experience to make inner correlations with the word hypocrisy that make real understanding of hypocrisy. The work is practical or it is not work. Work connects the outer world with the inner world. Is this connecting the objective world to the subjective world?
I am doing another work exercise taken from Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries. I am trying to like what I dislike. It is like praying for one’s enemies. Well, I don’t dislike Daniel Kahneman any longer, but liking hasn’t progressed beyond laughing at his antics and wiseacreing. He is a showman and a good boy. So am I.
This episode and my relationship with the forum have been discussed in depth with practitioners of the Twelve Step spiritual principles which are derived from early Christianity. There is a wealth of work memory of using work principles in daily life, within some of these individuals. I discussed the feelings of fear and shame after go2's spree, with a retired psychologist from Texas who has decades of experience with Twelve Step spiritual principles. After he listened to my detailed description of the event he asked a question, “Do you remember the first time you began to pretend to be different than you are?” I thought for a few minutes and the feeling of fear and shame led me back to a similar feeling event when I was five years old.
I grew up in a family which read parables, fables and fairy tales and I did not know that most of the world cannot hear in symbol and metaphor. The world is weighed and measured and labeled according to the protocol's of secular man. At kindergarten show and tell, I wove beautiful stories from arrowheads and bird’s eggs which I had found. The Middle American teacher and principal called my parents to discuss the possibility that my stories indicated a lack of appropriate perception of reality. They called my stories lying.
My parents were mortified and urged me to find the famous mute button. That is the moment I became a good little go2 machine. The problem with being a good boy is I have to deny and buffer real feelings and impressions to pretend to be decent and civilized. It is the history of civilization, within our inner world. It is the comet Kondoor striking the earth and Atlantis sinking beneath the sea of the subconscious. The go2 machine does not feel, has no conscience, and is not real. We are captured and domesticated and have forgotten the trauma of our education as civilized machines.
I have been examining and digesting the patterns of behavior and the psyche implications of this recovered memory, using the work as third force to understand go2's sprees and the origins and structures of go2's machine. When we go down this path far enough the work begins to fight our machine. This is the work which can lead us to consciousness from the material of our lives if we can pay the price of conscious labor and intentional suffering. My foe is not Daniel Kahneman and his world, my foe is what I have not observed, acknowledged, and accepted in my inner world.
Mathew 10:34-36 said:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
I wish to thank all who provided material and guidance so I can work to be a conscious man.
