What do you do to "wake up"?

[Nević Nenad]

*You have anyone in mind when you wrote this?

No.It is irrelevant, even for me.

Not sure I understand you here. You are amazed why someone wouldn't use knowledge gained with work on him/herself? Why? I can think of a million reasons why I would not act on 'knowledge gained'. Variously they come under temptation, distraction

I was not thinking on “use" knowledge on other people, I was thinking on use it or utilizing it on ourselves, otherways it has no significance at all, and therefore it is not knowledge if we not use it on our own lives.

Shane said it real good on using knowledge on other people and I agree with that.

While I don't share my deepest thoughts and feelings with most, if not all people in my world, it's differnt from not loving them. I think it comes from love that I've learned to not do so. It's been difficult and painful to see that those I cherish don't want to see the world as it is. I've tried to share everything I've learned to different people I thought might be interested. But what always turns out to be the case is either I am doing it out of self importance or from some lack of knowledge about them. If someone doesn't want to see reality, it's not helpful to put them in a position that will fill their life with more unnecessary suffering which will make their life more difficult.

Starsailor, I am afraid that I dont understand you in this sentence.

Perhaps this is the case for you now. From where I am now, I too have enhanced ability to “recognise people of real value (so to speak) who can maybe understand me.

This I wrote for make logical pause between this two quotes.

Gurdjieff has a term for what you're guilty of here – wrong external consideration. It's not your work to consider whether another's work is being correctly applied or not. Strive to better understand your own machine and its workings, not how well or otherwise another might be struggling with their machine.

Cassiopaeans wrote:

A: Because an STS vehicle does not learn to be an STO candidate by determining the needs of another.

I am guilty for that, and you are acting like good friends and help me to realize that.I admit that sometimes I get into this "preaching trip" but usually I also get “treatment" like this one from some of my phisical life friends (and there are 2-3 of them, not think that I have dosens of them)

Do you really think that you can tell if anyone around you is awake or not? Do you really think that you can tell if you are awake or just dreaming that you are awakening?

No, I cant tell any of that.

I wrote this:

And seems that I am myself blessed with having met more then one seeker, every one of them at different level of knowledge and understanding, but it seems that we all are going in the same direction.

If I can now, I will try to correct myself.

It really seems to me that they are on some level of awakening, and if their awareness ( or mine ) is going to be false or to be some problems with that, I am hoping that I will be able to see that.All in this thought is based on my current level of awareness, which I am aware of that, can be very low.And so I am further guilty for impulsive thinking and clumsy writing.

It is not theoretical -it is not a possibility -it is the 'reality' in which we live - we are machines - until we work as if our souls depend on it (and they do) to become unlike machines -we are machines -and the vast, vast majority of humanity will never be anything other than a machine. G gives clues, hints and clear instructions on how to become 'not a machine' - on how to extract oneself from the 'matrix' and this is - at least from my perspective -a bit more than just 'deep thought'.

I agree with this, and that sentence I quoted is not just a deep thought (is there a shallow thought?) I think it’s a true guideline.

One detail you seem to have not brought up is that once a person actually finds a like minded network, their life changes (well, my life changed) - and I am less alone and less closed off and fenced in than I ever imagined I would be.

yes =) I wanted to say something like that, but get losted in my own thoughts during writing.Its like you condensed my few last posts.


To answer the topic, to get awake I also talk to my friends, just like here now, and this helps me a lot.For now.

 

[D Rusak]

Hey all,

Sorry for the late reply- I was gone this weekend at an awesome seminar which I will write a little bit about here also.

This is in reference to my post about "talking with a friend". One of the first things that came to my mind was that we use the word "friend" so casually. We have different friends, who we do different things with. Some of my best friends are not interested in the esoteric path at all. I still am close to them, and in their own way, they are on the path of evolution and developing their empathy. If I told some of them, well, I'm thinking of following a teacher who all I really know about her (let's say I had stumbled upon the Signs page and forum and read a couple of pages of the Wave, ) is that she has an outlook on life that really resonates with me, but she talks to aliens in another dimension that are possibly herself in the future, and that we are 'food for the moon', they might think I was [temporarily] bonkers, and offer their opinion that such a path seems crazy (let's also assume that a true friend would give advice but not hinder my decision). Obviously, this would be explained a little more in detail, but you get the gist (and remember, this is someone just introduced to the material). Some "friends" are going to be of no help at all because their path is different. It doesn't make them any less of a friend, I think; it's just that their ignorance is not relevant? to my path. However, someone who might be an acquaintance, even someone you've just met, who is seeking the same or similar things, could be of much more help to one in making their decision. I could argue in this case that the forumites, who helped me pursue my Aims, were my friends, even though I had never met any of you and perhaps had even written little (if I was just getting started, trying to make a decision). It's really hard to tell, since my in-person friends are being equally, although differently, empathetic, which is IMHO what friendship is about. Just because you can go grab a beer and relax with someone doesn't mean that they will have anything useful to say in that matter. Then again, someone who is completely closed to the concept might randomly say that something that makes everything clear.

What mada85 mentioned about an "inner" friend was I think the direction I was trying to go in by referring to something more "introverted". Ultimately we need to make the choice by ourselves. Having an internal, rational and conscious debate in which one weighs a decision is crucial. If we are truly being honest with ourselves, we may find a dichotomy between our reactionary self and our conscious self. I think we could say that both are important, and that we have to have a relationship of friendship between these two parts of ourselves.

This weekend I attended what I jokingly referred to as "musician hippie camp". It was a workshop where we applied aspects of various philosophies, integralism in particular, to the way we approached working on the instrument and our musical (and other) goals. I had never met most of the people before. But, because we had a common aim of improving ourselves consciously, and even though every one had had a different way of coming to remarkably similar conclusions, I consider them to be friends who aided in my development of consciousness, and my choices in following a teacher/teaching (the 4th Way/SOTT/etc., in my case).

I really was interested in seeing what everyone else thought here on the forum, because I was confused on this subject- which I guess could be the difference between networking with people in general, and networking with people who are looking for this 4th way, this other way to knowledge and compassion, which is what I think we are striving for here. Besides, I think the contemplation of who exactly are "friends" are is valid. It's definitely unique to each person, and we can't be completely literally honest with everyone- the reference to being agents of the matrix that turn on was spot on. Also, we should not discount ourselves as one of these true friends IMHO. And, question everything, right? See what fits- perhaps we will have a better understanding by considering this idea. I know I've shifted in a different direction by reading everyone's comments, thinking about it on my own, etc.

Hopefully this all makes sense/clarifies my original question!

 

[TheSpoon]

I really do use an alarm! I've got my computer's appointment calendar set to go off every 30 minutes with an alert that says "WAKE UP!" which triggers me back into some sort of self awareness.

I also come back into myself whenever I walk up a particular corridor in my office - I remember to check my posture, breath, exist a little more fully than when I'm sitting in front of a computer (being) completely absorbed in (by) my work.

I'm still getting to grips with "self remembering", but it sounds similar to what I've know from my Buddhist studies as "reflexive consciousness" - aware of self and other at the same time.

It's quite a distinctive flavour of consciousness - it puts me right back into a set of thoughts like - how am I feeling? how am I evolving spiritually? Is what I'm seeing around me real? Who's voice is that in my head? Who just said that? And that?

And of course, I lose the game.
http://www.savethegame.org/

 

[dangibbee]

What do you do to "wake up"?

Well I began writing an autobiographical account of my life. I'm about 3 drafts in right now, and I say "about" because it's so broken up and sloppy. Each time, though, I find more and more details to fish out of the "debris of history". Thus far it's provided me with alot of shocks, kind of like shocks in reserve that I didn't deal with at the time and can deal with now. It's my attempt to inch my way towards using the present to repair the past. As for preparing for the future I think I'll just take it one step at a time. Or wait, maybe that's the present. ;) Sorry bad joke!