Thinking outl oud and thought I'd share

[Al Today]

I'm glad to see new seekers coming in to network to learn and share. I've been around a while, but I feel new also. I've gotta lotta work to do myself. Mostly, I dig up stuff, and throw my thoughts out to the forum to see what others think. If your sincere, you'll probably, eventually, get mad at someone. I did, and probably will again. Sacred cows can be painful when discovered. But don't fret, these are great people who DO care. But, I gotta say something. This happens sometimes at work, when I'm in a meeting and have a question, someone usually says "That's a good idea. Why don't you go find out and report back". Please don't get me wrong, everyone askes questions, and there is sooo dang much to read and think about. Nobody can do this alone But think about this, the benefits from self discovery is much greater and deeper felt than someone just giving an answer.


And that glow font/thingy is cool...

 

[Bo]

learning is fun isn't it?! :D

Q: (L) Where do I go from here? Where do we all go?
A: Everywhere.

Shouldn't there actually be a huge ''READMEFIRST" button for new members? to tell them whats the forum about, I think I saw such thread on the old forum layout , hmm but can't find it now

 

[PepperFritz]

Shouldn't there actually be a huge ''READMEFIRST" button for new members? to tell them whats the forum about....

The following information appears below the Registration form, which new members must fill out in order to obtain a username and password. I doubt that many actually read it.... :/


_____________________________________


Okay people! Let's be clear on some things before you join up, now I know you are aching to get in there and comment on... stuff... but before you do you need to agree to some basic rules about politeness, kindness, and not being a total psycho. You also need to understand the philosophy of the owners of this forum and the associated websites.


First our Vision for this forum: to create an environment for the stimulation, development and then the alignment of objective consciousnesses as defined and described by Georges Gurdjieff.

"So that we can imagine the whole of humanity, known as well as unknown to us, as consisting so to speak of several concentric circles.

"The inner circle is called the 'esoteric'; this circle consists of people who have attained the highest development possible for man, each one of whom possesses individuality in the fullest degree, that is to say, an indivisible 'I,' all forms of consciousness possible for man, full control over these states of consciousness, the whole of knowledge possible for man, and a free and independent will. They cannot perform actions opposed to their understanding or have an understanding which is not expressed by actions. At the same time there can be no discords among them, no differences of understanding. Therefore their activity is entirely co-ordinated and leads to one common aim without any kind of compulsion because it is based upon a common and identical understanding.

"The next circle is called the 'mesoteric,' that is to say, the middle. People who belong to this circle possess all the qualities possessed by the members of the esoteric circle with the sole difference that their knowledge is of a more theoretical character.' This refers, of course, to knowledge of a cosmic character. They know and understand many things which have not yet found expression in their actions. They know more than they do. But their understanding is precisely as exact as, and therefore precisely identical with, the understanding of the people of the esoteric circle. Between them there can be, no discord, there can be no misunderstanding. One understands in the way they all understand, and all understand in the way one understands. But as was said before, this understanding compared with the understanding of the esoteric circle is somewhat more theoretical.

"The third circle is called the 'exoteric,' that is, the outer, because it is the outer circle of the inner part of humanity. The people who belong to this circle possess much of that which belongs to people of the esoteric and mesoteric circles but their cosmic knowledge is of a more philosophical character, that is to say, it is more abstract than the knowledge of the mesoteric circle. A member of the mesoteric circle calculates, a member of the exoteric circle contemplates. Their understanding may not be expressed in actions. But there cannot be differences in understanding between them. What one understands all the others understand."

This issue of understanding is based on Objectivity. A few points about Objectivity:

For this group, linear thinking is subjective and only nonlinear thinking can be objective.

Objective is "how the universe sees itself".

Our culture has co-opted the word "objective" and has made it to serve as an equivalent of "scientific materialism," but when you grok that scientism is, for the most part NOT scientific, but is rather another subjective religion then you see that no part of the word "objective" applies to science or "linear thinking."

Subjective is the story about the blind men and the elephant - they all think that the elephant is the part of it that they are feeling and that is all there is. Objective is when they begin to share their observations and come to the realization that the elephant is more than what each of them experiences independently. Someone who can see would experience more of the elephant than the blind men, though this seeing would still be limited. Objective is the elephant as it experiences itself added to the observations of the blind men added together with view of the one who can see. It takes a group to achieve such objectivity. But once each of them has shared their perceptions and experience, and all of the group have assimilated this information, they can all then achieve an objective understanding of the elephant - or very close.

Boris Mouravieff writes about the esoteric WORK of achieving objectivity in his first volume of Gnosis:

"We cannot reach the objective except through the medium of the subjective. This is the underlying reason for esoteric studies: they allow the exterior man to give objective validity to his subjective mentality. He can achieve this by a technique analogous to one we apply to precision instruments: before putting them to work, we determine the reading error of each.

"By taking the 'subjectivity' of instruments into account in this way, we obtain correct readings from them, in spite of their flaws. To observe the phenomena of our internal world and those of the external world with precision, we must have recognized and determined the reading error of our mental instrument for observation, one of the main tools of the Personality. All esoteric teaching is oriented towards this goal, which is reached with the second Birth-when man attains a new form of consciousness and existence which is quite different - objective - and which exterior man can only represent to himself in a vague and obscure way. [ ...]

"Our perception of time varies. This is true in two ways: it varies from one person to another and, for each person, it varies with his physical or mental condition. The influence of age, health and emotional state are well enough known.

"Beside these general examples, there exist particular cases where the disappearance of time is complete: for example, during dreamless sleep, a brief loss of consciousness, or under general anaesthesia. The loss of the notion of time in such cases is due to physiological causes.

"But time can also be made to disappear by voluntary, conscious effort, especially an effort of concentration. By practising the latter assiduously, we observe this phenomenon from the very first exercises. As we intensify our concentration more and more, we perceive time less and less.

"If, by methodical and sustained effort, we manage to eliminate everything from our field of observation apart from the physical or moral object on which we concentrate, and if, in addition, we are able to hold this fixed attention on a single point - which gives birth to contemplation - time entirely disappears.

"Conversely, the more man's attention is dispersed, the more time drags for him. This phenomenon is objective in itself. It is a law. Its reason for being - as well as the mechanism by which it works - will be explained later, in the Doctrine of the Present.

"It is interesting to point out another phenomenon: our ability to modify the rate of our own perception of time. This happens many times every day. We pay no attention to it, because this phenomenon occurs mechanically on a small scale. But it can also be produced voluntarily on a much larger scale."


Mission: The Evolution of Humanity.

This, too, is best described by Gurdjieff:

"Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly losing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines. It is impossible to say where is the end of all this and where the way out— or whether there is an end and a way out. One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.

"Everything I have said till now I have said about the whole of humanity. But as I pointed out before, the evolution of humanity can proceed only through the evolution of a certain group, which, in its turn, will influence and lead the rest of humanity.

"Are we able to say that such a group exists? Perhaps we can on the basis of certain signs, but in any event we have to acknowledge that it is a very small group, quite insufficient, at any rate, to subjugate the rest of humanity. Or, looking at it from another point of view, we can say that humanity is in such a state that it is unable to accept the guidance of a conscious group."

"How many people could there be in this conscious group?" someone asked.

"Only they themselves know this," said G.

"Does it mean that they all know each other?" asked the same person again.

"How could it be otherwise?" asked G. "Imagine that there are two or three people who are awake in the midst of a multitude of sleeping people. They will certainly know each other. But those who are asleep cannot know them. How many are they? We do not know and we cannot know until we become like them. It has been clearly said before that each man can only see on the level of his own being. But two hundred conscious people, if they existed and if they found it necessary and legitimate, could change the whole of life on the earth. But either there are not enough of them, or they do not want to, or perhaps the time has not yet come, or perhaps other people are sleeping too soundly."

In other words, it is suggested that 200 fully conscious beings, who...

"have attained the highest development possible for man, each one of whom possesses individuality in the fullest degree, that is to say, an indivisible 'I,' all forms of consciousness possible for man, full control over these states of consciousness, the whole of knowledge possible for man, and a free and independent will. They cannot perform actions opposed to their understanding or have an understanding which is not expressed by actions. At the same time there can be no discords among them, no differences of understanding. Therefore their activity is entirely co-ordinated and leads to one common aim without any kind of compulsion because it is based upon a common and identical understanding."

...could change the course of our world.

A corrollary goal is the accumulation and preservation of knowledge. Again, Gurdjieff on this subject:

"There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods of mass madness, often coinciding with geological cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very great quantity of the matter of knowledge. This, in its turn, necessitates the work of collecting this matter of knowledge which would otherwise be lost. Thus the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge frequently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of cultures and civilizations.

"This aspect of the question is clear. The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear. It is even difficult to imagine all the horror of this slavery. We do not understand what people are losing. But in order to understand the cause of this slavery it is enough to see how people live, what constitutes the aim of their existence, the object of their desires, passions, and aspirations, of what they think, of what they talk, what they serve and what they worship."


Methodology

*Facilitation of the creation and the sharing of objective knowledge by providing the framework / resources / moderation and "elder brother guidance."

As Gurdjieff has said:

"On the fourth way there is not one teacher. Whoever is the elder, he is the teacher. And as the teacher is indispensable to the pupil, so also is the pupil indispensable to the teacher. The pupil cannot go on without the teacher, and the teacher cannot go on without the pupil or pupils. And this is not a general consideration but an indispensable and quite concrete rule on which is based the law of a man's ascending. As has been said before, no one can ascend onto a higher step until he places another man in his own place. What a man has received he must immediately give back; only then can he receive more. Otherwise from him will be taken even what he has already been given."


* Capitalisation, sharing, analysis of information on key topics
* Scientific approach. Collection of direct and indirect data (videos, articles, books extracts,...) , sources validation, elaboration and challenge of hypothesis and theories consistent with validated datas.
* Maximization of the signal to noise ratio

Main topics :
* psychopathology
* consciousness dimensions and alignments (STO VS STS or creativity vs entropy)
* the Work (technics and methods aiming to the development of objective consciousness : shamanism, way of the warrior, diets, meditation,...)
* description and analysis of creative vs entropic interactions
* study of information collection, analysis and distribution (cointelpro, medias, disinformation,...)
* objective analysis of major knowledge fields (astronomy, zoology, biology, UFOs, daemons hisotry, religions,...)
* analysis of key historical events (Israel-Palestine conflict, 3rd reich 9/11,...)
* collection and evaluation of resources relating to those topics (Blog, websites, articles,...)

Values of this forum:
* objectivity
* respect
* sharing
* relevance
* empathy
* constructivness
* temperance


Again, some remarks from Gurdjieff about true Fourth Way Schools are relevant here:

"If we imagine humanity in the form of four concentric circles we can imagine four gates on the circumference of the third inner circle, that is, the exoteric circle, through which people of the mechanical circle can penetrate.

"These four gates correspond to the four ways described before.

"The first way is the way of the fakir, the way of people number one, of people of the physical body, instinctive-moving-sensory people without much mind and without much heart.

"The second way is the way of the monk, the religious way, the way of people number two, that is, of emotional people. The mind and the body should not be too strong.

"The third way is the way of the yogi. This is the way of the mind, the way of people number three. The heart and the body must not be particularly strong, otherwise they may be a hindrance on this way.

"Besides these three ways yet a fourth way exists by which can go those who cannot go by any of the first three ways.

"The fundamental difference between the first three ways, that is, the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi, and the fourth way consists in the fact that they are tied to permanent forms which have existed throughout long periods of history almost without change. At the basis of these institutions is religion. Where schools of yogis exist they differ little outwardly from religious schools. And in dif­ferent periods of history various societies or orders of fakirs have existed in different countries and they still exist. These three traditional ways are permanent ways within the limits of our historical period.

"Two or three thousand years ago there were yet other ways which no longer exist and the ways now in existence were not so divided, they stood much closer to one another.

"The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it. It appears and disappears governed by some particular laws of its own.

"The fourth way is never without some work of a definite significance, is never without some undertaking around which and in connection with which it can alone exist. When this work is finished, that is to say, when the aim set before it has been accomplished, the fourth way disappears, that is, it disappears from the given place, disappears in its given form, continuing perhaps in another place in another form. Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work which is being carried out in connection with the proposed undertaking. They never exist by themselves as schools for the purpose of education and instruction.

"Mechanical help cannot be required in any work of the fourth way. Only conscious work can be useful in all the undertakings of the fourth way. Mechanical man cannot give conscious work so that the first task of the people who begin such a work is to create conscious assistants.

"The work itself of schools of the fourth way can have very many forms and many meanings. In the midst of the ordinary conditions of life the only chance a man has of finding a 'way' is in the possibility of meeting with the beginning of work of this kind. But the chance of meeting with such work as well as the possibility of profiting by this chance depends upon many circumstances and conditions.

"The quicker a man grasps the aim of the work which is being executed, the quicker can he become useful to it and the more will he be able to get from it for himself.

"But no matter what the fundamental aim of the work is, the schools continue to exist only while this work is going on. When the work is done the schools close. The people who began the work leave the stage. Those who have learned from them what was possible to learn and have reached the possibility of continuing on the way independently begin in one form or another their own personal work."


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So if you agree to the above, then come on in!


.

 

[Bo]

The following information appears below the Registration form, which new members must fill out in order to obtain a username and password. I doubt that many actually read it.... :/

Ahh ok I see, in the old forum layout it was a thread if I remember correctly, maybe the users could answer some questions before being able to join the forum, some questions about the work or something to see if they really ARE interested in the work, maybe this would create less noise? I dunno.

 

[anart]

The following information appears below the Registration form, which new members must fill out in order to obtain a username and password. I doubt that many actually read it.... :/

Ahh ok I see, in the old forum layout it was a thread if I remember correctly,

Actually, it was a 'forum rules' tab at the top of the page.

maybe the users could answer some questions before being able to join the forum, some questions about the work or something to see if they really ARE interested in the work, maybe this would create less noise? I dunno.

I don't really think that's necessary - this is a public forum and forum members learn pretty quickly how things work, if they are sincere. If they are not sincere, then that becomes evident sooner or later - all there is is lessons, after all.

 

[Bo]

Actually, it was a 'forum rules' tab at the top of the page.

ah yes, so it only changed from that to the register username.

I don't really think that's necessary - this is a public forum and forum members learn pretty quickly how things work, if they are sincere. If they are not sincere, then that becomes evident sooner or later - all there is is lessons, after all.

yeah true , otherwise ''Baked Noodles'' wouldn't exist :D

 

[Alana]

I'm glad to see new seekers coming in to network to learn and share.

You know, i also noticed a lot of "quests" lately, and wonder whether it has anything to do with the change to a new outfit

;)