UFOs are fake, so y'all better straighten up!

[Beau]

What American teenager calls an apartment a flat?

i.e. I am wearing a "Mask of Sanity" and am trying to hide my true identity from you.

Again, sarcasm in this case equates to aggression. You could have just said that you like to sound smart and sophisticated and that is why you termed your apartment a flat, even though that term is not used in America at all.

Ok, if you do an internet search for an article entitled "The Pepper Chase" you will find an article from the Citrus County Chronicle where I was president of the environmental club removing Brazillian Pepper plants from the Marine Science Station. That was about 5 and a half years ago. I was in 7th grade. Alternatively, you can just put in Neil Maves and you should find the article. There is also another Neil Maves who is a pilot or something in California. That's not me. I used the term flat as a simple word to denote a living area.

I fail to understand the relevance of such information. Are you saying that because of the above you are really smart and that is why you called an apartment a flat? In case you didn't know, flat is not at all an intellectual term. It's rather ordinary actually. Well, except for people who don't know that.

 

[Renaissance]

I feel confused and lost.

This is probably feeling closer to the state that you've been in much of life - the confusion and sense of loss aren't new things that have just shown up, just the reconnection is new. I'm not saying this is unique to you but is a usual experience when we begin to see how many lies we are made up of.

Until I make some real progress; it would probably be best if I become a lurker and don't start any more threads where I lead myself to believe I'm actually cognizant of all that is going on.

It's fine to know that you wont realize all or even most the things going on. This is part of being an ordinary human being. However, taking yourself out of participation in the forum would be listening to more lies that the predators mind is telling you. A time to reflect is good, but this is different from disengaging in the forum.

 

[Bo]

Until I make some real progress; it would probably be best if I become a lurker and don't start any more threads where I lead myself to believe I'm actually cognizant of all that is going on.

Neil, who wrote that? think about it, you or the predator? as Shane said, ''However, taking yourself out of participation in the forum would be listening to more lies that the predators mind is telling you.''

 

[Neil]

Everything above is you either feeling sorry for yourself (self-pity), which is the flip side of self-importance, or trying to evoke pity from the rest of us.

After I sat down and thought a moment about how programmed I really am, I had a very strong emotional response. I've felt sad, lonely, and guilty. In short, I feel like a horrible person. So with that said, what follows will probably be emotionally colored, but I will try to keep it in the middle.

My purpose here now is to change. To quit feeding my self importance. I have similar fears as you to what the pathocracy will do to us. It seems so wrong. Yet, with my superiority program I was becoming just like them. I had so much self-pity because there seems to be nothing "good" at all about me; it was all just lies. I, of course, still have this self-pity, but I'm trying not to allow it to control my thinking.

Well, I can't know for certain, but it is likely that you were raised in an environment where such thought processes were normal. It may be that you find it so hard to grasp because it is not easy for you to see aspects of yourself that are not positive our 'above average'.

I think this is true.

still, the longest journey starts with the first step, and that first step is often simply grasping the fact that everything one thinks about themselves is a lie.

Indeed, this appears to be true as well.

Don't think you are the only one who's felt this. Many here are dealing with the internal battles, and the only way we can learn is to share. I guess the first instinct of anyone who feels the heat is to hide,

My self-pity/program makes me feel that I am evil because I lied to myself about so many things so sucessfully. I am interested in knowing for sure. Who am I really? Thanks for the invitation, I will continue as long as I can.

Just wanted to mention that this sounds a lot like the flip side of the superiority program. There is, in fact, a middle ground between being perfect and being worthless - I think you can find it.

I think it is being open. But that is a lot easier said than done. I thought I was open before to new ideas and opinions, but we can clearly see just how "open" I was when my precious programs were being scrutinized. Openess implies an absence of bias which leads to an objective understanding. So difficult a thing to obtain for such a simple word. I'm glad you have faith in me, the road seems long and arduous, but I will not stay where I am for any longer.

I will respectfully disagree with you here.
[...]
The subtle implication is that you see blacks as different from you, for some reason.

You're right. I thought you were accusing me of being a conscious racist. And I guess I used this arument to somehow defend the program. According to Kesdjan's quiz, I came out as showing "little preference" but this is probably because I was expecting a bias to be found and was trying my hardest to avoid it. You are correct, when I dig deeply enough, I can see an us vs. them mentality. When I was a kid, everyone I saw at school was white, and then one day in third grade, a black boy transferred into my class. I remember how we all stared at him because he was so different. He seemed alien to us. I can only imagine how lonely and misplaced he must've felt. Our teacher told us that he was no different than us, but we were dumbfounded. That experience has always stuck in the back of my mind because it was the first time I ever saw someone with dark skin. I guess that is where it started. He was seen by us as a sort of a misfit, and we always differentiated ourselves from him by calling him "the black boy" even though we were raised in an environment that by and large shunned prejudice. And then one day he was just gone.

You can say it was blowing off steam, but what it really sounds like is you are annoyed by me and wanted to express that negative emotion without coming right out and doing it.

Actually, I think this is true too. I was blowing off steam because I was annoyed. And I was annoyed because I was convinced that there was no program when you could clearly see it.

"beyond such things" will be an annoyance

Even though you put it in quotes, it would be unwise to consider myself "beyond" anything. That's how I got into this whole mess to begin with. I must simply recognize that "That's Life," as you say, and learn to adapt.

I'm more of a rhythm and melody person myself. They can touch my heart as much or more than any lyric. Not everything in life has to have a meaning.

Well, I'm not saying that is all that is important. You can have a long boring song with with many meaningful words and practically no beat. You can also have a song talking about something trivial which is pleasant to listen to. I just place more emphasis on lyrics because I think a song should have a meaning. My major exception to this rule is in large social gatherings where jivey music kind of energizes you and gets you moving. Makes the time more enjoyable, at least for the few parties I've been to.

You could have just said that you like to sound smart and sophisticated and that is why you termed your apartment a flat, even though that term is not used in America at all.

Actually the term flat comes from a book I read in middle school. The people in it always called their home "the flat" and I kind of picked up the term. I did not know that flat actually meant apartment, and I intended on using it as a simplisitc term for "residence." Residence sounded too formal in context of what I was saying at the time.

I fail to understand the relevance of such information.

I took a physical instead of figurative interpretation of anart asking "What is REALLY going on behind this Neil persona?" Anart was asking an open question in a straightforward manner about the programs running in my head, but I interpreted it to mean that she was accusing me of lying about my identity as Neil Maves. This was largely due to the followingt statement.

Flat? What American teenager calls an apartment a flat?

Interpretation: An American teenager would not use this term because it is not in the vernacular. I thought this was a bit rash after all of the detail I had given about my college life, but disinfo artists can whip up elaborate stories, so I thought I would provide some evidence to the contrary. In reality, it wasn't really a big deal. I interpreted her to mean she had reason to doubt my identity just like I interpreted you to mean I was a racist.

In case you didn't know, flat is not at all an intellectual term. It's rather ordinary actually.

I avoid using words just for the heck of it. I try to use precise, descript terms. Do my posts come across as overly intellectual? Does it complicate your understanding?

Face it, you need to confront your false self in order to wake up.

Is this something I should be doing in a conversational setting like this, or more along the lines of self-contemplation? Also, should I finish Gurdjieff before I try to go much deeper?

 

[Neil]

Shane & Adam- Well, my thoughts of withdrawing from the forum were put forth by my intention to avoid creating disharmony in the group. This is the same reason I offered doing so when lyra "joined." I do honestly believe that SOTT is the "last best hope" for any of us, so if I can't support the mission, I can help it along by not being a burden. I do not often fail in my endeavors, and when I suddenly realized how programmed and ignorant I was yet generally "smart" I viewed this as a failure of perhaps my most important endeavor. I'm taking it really hard. But, all there is is lessons; you either learn or you don't. Since so many fundamental lies have been stripped away, I'm trying to understand objective knowledge, starting with knowledge of self. I may turn out to be a failure, but at least you guys gave me the chance to try.

 

[Beau]

I intended on using it as a simplisitc term for "residence." Residence sounded too formal in context of what I was saying at the time.

Why not use the term apartment? Surely you are familiar with that term being used as a simplistic term for residence. Or house.

I fail to understand the relevance of such information.

I took a physical instead of figurative interpretation of anart asking "What is REALLY going on behind this Neil persona?" Anart was asking an open question in a straightforward manner about the programs running in my head, but I interpreted it to mean that she was accusing me of lying about my identity as Neil Maves. This was largely due to the followingt statement.

Flat? What American teenager calls an apartment a flat?

Interpretation: An American teenager would not use this term because it is not in the vernacular. I thought this was a bit rash after all of the detail I had given about my college life, but disinfo artists can whip up elaborate stories, so I thought I would provide some evidence to the contrary.

Well, perhaps she did doubt your identity. I'll go ahead and conjecture that what you provided to disabuse anart of this notion was not evidence to the contrary. If someone were to assume the identity of Neil Maves they would most likely be aware of where one could find information about said identity.

Now, that's being a little paranoid but I don't discount any possibility. Surely Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is that you are who you say you are, but sometimes simple isn't always smart. Hence, anart probably did think that you were not sincere in your representation of yourself. I wouldn't let myself get too offended by it, it's nothing personal. We just have become accustomed to expecting attack from all areas and any way possible.

 

[anart]

Well, perhaps she did doubt your identity. I'll go ahead and conjecture that what you provided to disabuse anart of this notion was not evidence to the contrary. If someone were to assume the identity of Neil Maves they would most likely be aware of where one could find information about said identity.

Now, that's being a little paranoid but I don't discount any possibility. Surely Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is that you are who you say you are, but sometimes simple isn't always smart. Hence, anart probably did think that you were not sincere in your representation of yourself. I wouldn't let myself get too offended by it, it's nothing personal. We just have become accustomed to expecting attack from all areas and any way possible.

~tap, tap, tap~ Uhmm, did you guys not read my post? (it's one page back)

Actually, I wasn't going in that direction at all, but you do seem a bit defensive, now that you mention it. ;) The only reason I pointed that out was because I've never heard a teenager from Florida call an apartment a flat - that doesn't mean there's not a youth subculture of 'flatists' in Florida - I am rather behind the social times, after all.

I was wondering if this was the real Neil talking, or another program or defense mechanism surfacing - it is not unusual at all for such things to happen, so I just thought I'd point it out to see where it went.

 

[Neil]

I read your post, I was explaining to beau why I said what I said. I guess he missed that part.

I thought flat had a sort of colloquial zing to it over house. I was being annoyed/sarcastic/agressive and I was writing that part fast. It probably fit in better with the tone of my writing.

 

[Beau]

~tap, tap, tap~ Uhmm, did you guys not read my post? (it's one page back)

Actually, I wasn't going in that direction at all, but you do seem a bit defensive, now that you mention it. ;) The only reason I pointed that out was because I've never heard a teenager from Florida call an apartment a flat - that doesn't mean there's not a youth subculture of 'flatists' in Florida - I am rather behind the social times, after all.

Oops. I did manage to miss that. Sorry for putting words into your mouth. :)

 

[John G]

Shane & Adam- Well, my thoughts of withdrawing from the forum were put forth by my intention to avoid creating disharmony in the group. This is the same reason I offered doing so when lyra "joined." I do honestly believe that SOTT is the "last best hope" for any of us, so if I can't support the mission, I can help it along by not being a burden. I do not often fail in my endeavors, and when I suddenly realized how programmed and ignorant I was yet generally "smart" I viewed this as a failure of perhaps my most important endeavor. I'm taking it really hard. But, all there is is lessons; you either learn or you don't. Since so many fundamental lies have been stripped away, I'm trying to understand objective knowledge, starting with knowledge of self. I may turn out to be a failure, but at least you guys gave me the chance to try.

Actually discussions like this tend to be seen as initially a good learning experience for the group. They can become noise at some point but I don't think that is a real worry with you. Anart mentioned you bounce from one extreme to another. I think in the short run, it might help to try to think in terms of gray areas, middle grounds, commonality and things not being horribly bad or wonderfully good. In the long run however, you are in the same horribly bad leaky boat as the rest of us. :)

 

[Nienna]

If I'm anything but programs. Is there any soul in there? Or am I just some sort of OP condemmed to do the same thing over and over again.

From what I've read of the Gurdjieff material, he thought that none of us has a soul. But some of us can grow one. But this takes an enormous amount of work on ourselves. As far as being all programs, we all are. From our first breathe we are being programmed by parents, relatives, friends, teachers, the media and ourselves. What we have to do is get shocked enough so that we can wake up just enough to realize that this is what is happening and to try to stop it if we are so inclined. But, once again, it is a lot of work. It is so easy to just go back to sleep and dream we are awake.

I have such glaring issues; I need to step back and take a look... I need to do a lot of things. I'm behaving like a psychopath, I seem out of touch with reality, I have this blatant disregard for people, and I'm ponerizing those around me.

And this is the beginning of really waking up. To come face to face with our predator. To see how truly mechanical and asleep we are. How very programmed we are. But you are not alone.

Am I one of the 6%? Have I been lying to myself this whole time so I could live with my actions and leech energy off of others? I hope I didn't corrupt the minds of Third Density Resident and Kesdjan with my foolishness. If I did, I'm just disrupting their Work to feed my own programs. If I cannot see this and see the truth what a monster I'm becoming, I have no place even being here.

These are some good questions to ask yourself, but it is also the self-pity program. I am quite familiar with it. It is the flip side of the self-importance program, which I am equally familiar with. But the fact that you can now see this gives you the opportunity to start to work on it.

I don't know what to do other than focus on who or what I really am; use this as an opportunity to see myself instead of making excuses for my behavior. It will take some time for me to contemplate all of the programs that have been revealed and then actually take a step towards being human.

Sounds like an excellent idea.

I have denied myself that opportunity because I thought that awareness made me somehow superhuman, when in fact all it did was make me self-righteous.

Yes, the self-importance program again. It's a nasty thing and so insidious.

This awareness itself may have been an illusion, since I can't seem to see anything at all in myself. So no, nothing is right in the State of Denmark. In this state, I am little more than a liability. I feel that I have little to contribute except various lies and empty ideas. Until I make some real progress; it would probably be best if I become a lurker and don't start any more threads where I lead myself to believe I'm actually cognizant of all that is going on.

Here you start out okay, but as you go on, the predator starts taking over again; and by the end it is all predator talking. This is exactly what it would want. For you to lurk and not contribute, to read and not be seen; for if you do contribute, it could again be found out and light shone on it so that you could again wake a little more. By lurking, the predator cannot be found out.

What do you think would have happened if you had decided to not even post at the beginning of this thread? None of this would have come about. You would have merrily gone along dreaming that you were awake while your predator gleefully fed you dreams and lies to keep you slumbering on and on.

This is why contributing to a forum like this is so important. And this is why the predator in us makes us squirm when we get ready to push that send button, or tries to deceive us into thinking that we are only making it worse for the others by contributing (isn't that so upright and understanding of us). Trust me, there are too many people here who can spot something rotten to let you harm anyone by contributing.

So I think,as far as this forum is concerned, that it would be best for you to contribute as much as you can, as often as you can. That is if you truly want to wake up and "grow a soul". It takes a lot of hard work, and coming face to face with all of our ugly, nauseous programs is just the start.

Or so I think.

 

[Renaissance]

Well, my thoughts of withdrawing from the forum were put forth by my intention to avoid creating disharmony in the group.

This seems pretty self important to me. Real disturbances in the group are usually dealt with efficiently. I'm sure you've seen how quickly such kinds of problems are resolved plenty of times. It seems much more likely that you're trying to avoid a different kind of disturbance that is within you, than within the group. This is the predator's avoidance and by it's nature, it is not conscious. It doesn't want to be seen by you again and is fighting for survival.

We can see the predator's tracks in these previous statements of yours:

So while it may be acceptable for normal people to engage in these "harmless violent thoughts," it is a sign of inconsistency in the Work. It is just one of the rigors of doing Work; I shouldnt've said it.

You're seeing something that simply doesn't exist! If it came across that I was accusing the black race; I'm sorry, that was not my intention.

Well, I'm glad you see what I was trying to say, even if it came out wrong somehow

Part of the Work is to get to a point where we can let these things 'slip out.' We need to see them - and you should have said every thing you did. Only when we feel that we can be ourselves with all our programs are we able to express them so they can be spotted and debugged. This process doesn't cause disharmony - keeping them inside and away from the group does. It's better to express our programs here, where the group is here to help, than allow them to cause further harm to our true self and others around us. There is no usefulness in thinking that 'since the group is trying to help me I do not want to hurt the group and so will be quiet' - that is the predator thinking. Try to identify when it is acting up and what it is trying to do.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Just some observations on the whole "these black guys" thing. The way I see it, the reason a statement like that reveals racism even if not intended is that the assumption is that white is "normal."

Neil probably would never say something like, "I was downtown and these two white guys came up to me." White guys to other white people are just "guys" whereas black guys are black guys.

Since we live in a white supremacist society (still, even if it is to a lesser degree than in the past) African-Americans (I personally think this is a better term than "black" which creates a dichotomy or extreme contrast to "white" which should be European-American) would specify both black and white in a same situation, I would guess. So a "black guy" would tell the story, "I was downtown and these two white guys came up to me" or, "I was downtown and these two black guys (or some other term they would call each other) came up to me."

But if you ask a white United States person to visualize a typical "American" and they will visualize a white person 100% of the time. A case tailor-made for deconstructive analysis: Take a dichotomy, impose it on a complicated world, take one term as the "norm" or non-term, and make it hegemonic over the other term.

So maybe, Neil, a way to move forward on this is to actually refer to white people as white people. When you refer to a friend, you could describe him as a "white friend." Or one of your professors as, "my professor, who's white." I am only half-joking here.

Don

 

[Z...]

I am sure neil suffers from prejudices towards other races, we all do
its a very powerfull programm difficult to weed out just like that
but to be honest I am a bit fed up with all this hypocritical political correctness in terminology....
African American is one of the worst coins IMO, what does that mean? It would be the same if someone called me Asian European since my ancestors supposedly came to Europe from Asia,
not to mention that blind people are now visually challenged, venereal diseases are STD etc. its all really funny its like trying to found euphemism for discrimination

personally I don't see why shouldn't we call people black if their skin is black, it is as normal as I accept someone calling me white, on the other hand I would have a problem calling oriental people yellow since their skin is anything but yellow, or native American red as their skin doesn't look red to me

 

[anart]

personally I don't see why shouldn't we call people black if their skin is black, it is as normal as I accept someone calling me white, on the other hand I would have a problem calling oriental people yellow since their skin is anything but yellow, or native American red as their skin doesn't look red to me

How odd. Personally, my skin appears to be more peachy colored than white. As a matter of fact, I've never seen skin that is white. The African people I have seen have skin color ranging from a very deep brown to tan - the darkest skin color I've seen are some pictures of people in Africa, but even they don't have black skin. So, you make a distinction for Asians and Native Americans (who, using your previous 'so tired of politically correct verbiage' point, would be called Orientals and Indians or Injuns) - but don't make the distinction for the skin colors that are clearly not 'black' or 'white'.

I realize this post has gone off on a rather enormous tangent, but I just wanted to point out some inconsistencies in your expression. Just doesn't make much sense to me. ;)