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Reality Safari: Gurdjieff

Started by Cramulus, April 11, 2017, 02:25:05 PM

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picoli

I love the discussion under this post! Thanks for filling my Saturday evening  :oops:

I hope you don't mind, that my capacity of intellectual output are exhausted. Nevertheless I want to share an experience with you. A couple of weeks ago, I swapped my desk chair for a laaaaarge exercise ball. I'm sorry, if this is inappropriate but I'm still shook. My flow is back and everytime I'm sitting on the ball I am SO creative and full of thoughts and it's just a normal exercise ball.  :eek: I don't want to recommend the brand because there's probably a lot of good ones but I can link an article which helped me a lot: https://www.einrichtungsradar.de/sitzball-test/.

Just wanted to share that with you.  :lol:

Fujikoma

I, too, bounce on balls while contemplating life's big questions.

LMNO

Congratulations on acing your Turing test.

Cramulus

#243
The Foundation has been slowly getting up to speed with hosting online events. I've been to a few readings, meditation sessions, group discussions. It really isn't the same as doing it in person, but I guess it's what we're stuck with.

One little moment of insight I received recently -- I'm never sure if typing these things out will be useful to anybody else; I am not sure these experiences can really be communicated via text... but this thread is kind of a journal, so I'll share a little morsel of something that affected me.

At the end of a guided sensing session,
we are feeling completely aligned and centered and intentional
all the bands of consciousness are touching each other,
there is a point of contact between conscious and subconscious
it feels like a moment of being in the Real World

The guide says
"The world is looking out"

had a brief moment, just a flash, when I felt like the entire cosmos, if it was forced through a Cramulus-shaped hole... that's my conscious experience

felt like
the human is the small version of the Cosmos

or the whole cosmos
is the big version
of the cell






another week, we're talking about working with negative emotions

Gurdjieff used to basically troll people -- urge them to stay in contact with the stimulus that was causing this kneejerk reaction in them. At the priory, there used to be this super annoying guy, nobody wanted to be around him, everybody hated him... one day, he was like "That's it, I'm outta here. Mr. Gurdjieff, I'm leaving." Gurdjieff drove him to the train station. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

2 hours later, Gurdjieff's car came back to the priory... and both of them got out. Turns out Gurdjieff told the guy he'd pay him a salary to continue studying at the priory.

He told the others, "You need him." This annoying dude provided a force that they had to struggle with. Because learning to Live Good is not just about floating away on some euphoria cloud of mindful bliss. No, you need mindfulness when you're annoyed. When you're in the kneejerk reaction. When you are leaning away. That's when you can develop something.

G would say "you need a strong angel on one shoulder... and a strong devil on the other."

So, this week, we're working on staying with a negative emotion - seeing it, staying with it. Instead of just trying to get away from it, put it in a box, make it go away -- sit with it for a second. Observe it. Don't analyse, just observe.

There's a resistance to this. It's hard. There's something that doesn't want to be seen. And usually, when you see it, it goes away.

One woman phrased it, "If you see the dragon... if you're lucky, he'll give you a wink before he vanishes."







I've got this Discord server which is doing a weekly book club. It's also a discordian cabal. We're reading In Search of the Miraculous. This week, we're up to chapter 4. If you're interested in meeting and discussing this stuff (as I think it can really only be digested properly by groups), shoot me a PM.


Fujikoma

This thread, the Billy thread, and the useful insights and witty banter the members here have are part of what keeps me coming back here despite the fact that a lot of people wish I wouldn't. Always a thought-provoking read that encourages me to shift my perspective. Thanks for continuing to provide perspective, Cramulus.

But yeah, me continuing to check here, I've been trying to just observe, I'm not a good participant but that doesn't mean I can't find the content interesting. So yeah, time for me to go back to lurking.

hooplala

Is the book club still meeting on Wednesdays? I'm usually busy but would love to check it out if i'm ever not.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

Cramulus

Yes it is -- shoot me a PM if you want an invite! We're getting close to the end of In Search of the Miraculous, will probably finish that study some time in February.

We're also a Discordian cabal which talks about non-Gurdjieff things.
There are a few little subgroups, like a film club which meets and watches movies together, a group that is exploring the philosophy of Deleuze & Guitar.



Today is Gurdjieff's Life Day, by the way. Happy January 13th!

Cramulus

#247
Yesterday, I completed my first reading of Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson. I started reading it in November 2016. I actually read the entire first volume (out of three) because someone online told me that was the best way to understand Gurdjieff. LOL, it wasn't. After a few hundred pages, I gave up and decided that if I wanted to learn anything, I'd have to go to a meeting with real people.

As I've mentioned in this thread, Beelzebub's Tales is a real challenge to read. Complicated ideas & symbols are shared in a torturously worded way which forces you to maintain sharp concentration. It's not a book you can skim or read while drowsy. In fact, a good chunk of the first chapter consists of Gurdjieff trying to turn you away. If you're looking for an excuse to stop reading, he gives you many.

Is it worth the read? I have a hard time answering that because the answer is so subjective. In an Aftermathematics Research Cabal meeting, Enki once asked me if he were to 'dig in that yard', if he would find anything. How could I answer that? How would I predict if you, personally, will find the treasure Gurdjieff buried so carefully? It's like asking if you'll get anything from reading the Bible, or the Principia Discordia. The answer's 50% book, 50% you.

Enki was kind of asking... is there a real meat to it? or is it hard for hard's sake, like some mental treadmill?

It's got a lot going on. It's said to be written "on seven levels", and the words themselves are only one level. Thinking about what you just read often reveals more meaning, maybe that's part of it... And yes, the effort required to dig up these insights does give them a sort of aura. You "paid" for them, after all, invested time and effort into finding them... It's interesting to observe how that works, internally.

Maybe the better question is, are you interested in alchemy? In how lead turns into gold? in how dreaming consciousness can turn into a true waking consciousness? Because the work needed to do that, in the self, and the work needed to read the book, are analogical processes.

But where I'm sitting right now, it feels wrong to describe the book in terms of what it might give you, like understanding it is some accomplishment valuable all by itself, an achievement to add to your character sheet. I found that I had good results approaching the book not as a piece of content, but as a process. In order to read Beelzebub's Tales, I needed to be in a certain state: A state of interest, a desire for a certain something (something which may be better to leave unstated).

At one point in In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky says that something omitted from many spiritual / philosophical searches is that the 'big cosmic questions and mysteries' might only be fruitful to contemplate when you're in a certain state. You might call it an emotional state. Receptive, but also capable of creating internal order or disorder. What is this state, and how do you arrive at it? This is a holy question.

because whatever it is I'm doing with my life .... I'm usually too zoomed in to see it and evaluate it. I can only see it from that state.

At the very end of Beelzebub's Tales, Gurdjieff includes a From the Author section where he addresses the audience directly. He explains, in [relatively] plain language, why he wrote the book the way he did, and what his message is. If I've been blindfolded and feeling an elephant spot by spot, that essay is like a little miniature elephant. Much easier to feel the entire shape, when it's small like that. It feels like the book desposited enough material underneath the surface that when I read this essay, it shined with a real gnostic intensity. If I'd read it before reading the whole freakin book, before I had obsessed over and integrated these ideas, I don't know that it would have had the same richness. I almost wish I'd started reading the book, back in November 2016, with that chapter.

In the first chapter, Gurdjieff says his goal is to "destroy, mercilessly . . . the beliefs and views about everything existing in the world."




tl;dr
he succeeded




Galerson

I'm learning about Kanō Jigorō. He founded Judo and was still alive in the 1920s. He had his own philosophy. He believed you can gain victory by yielding to strength. I'm just a white belt so am just starting out. And of course COVID-19 really limits what we can do right now.