the Fellowship of Friends Discussion, part 3(2)
April 3, 2008 by the Esoteric Sheik of Inner Confusion
Welcome to the 32nd part of the Fellowship of Friends Discussion. For previous parts of the discussion please visit AnimamRecro or the Main page of this blog. For a more organized reading check out The Fellowship of Friends WikiSpace.
For sites in Russian and Italian, click http://fofway.narod.ru/ and http://laliberastrada.blogspot.com/ respectively.
For more information check Rick Ross and Steven Hassan.
This is where you can find the website of the Fellowship of Friends.
If you decide to interact as well as digest, feel free to start here.
And as always (and above else), enjoy and have fun.
Hi folks.
some of the people who said they would write a letter only did that, ie ( said they would ) because if they actually had written there would be more than the handful that have arrived at Susans.
There are no more than when a number of people promised to send one.
Am tempted to post the petition as it stands with the few letters that have actually arrived as it seems to be taking a lifetime……
http://fellowshipoffriends.wikispaces.com/
Once it is installed some fourthway sites belonging to real fourthway people have promised to install it on their sites thereby giving it world wide circulation.
jx
“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to
welcome the ecstatic experience.”
~Emily Dickinson
some sugar to help the medicine down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Mw6b1T50U&feature=related
jx
to uno, ton and all the ayahuasca and coffee generation (thanks arthur, I wish the same for you).
A timely and interesting discussion on ayahuasca is going on right now at
http://www.realitysandwich.com/ayahuasca_monologues
check it out. There’s food for thought, and I think it complements well the different aspects that we’ve been trying to explore here.
Personally, I was rather struck by this sentence from one of the posts:
“If I did so I would be sacrificing dignity for divinity, which to me leads to cultish activity.”
I am going to try to keep that one in mind….
Laura ~
If anything we were not taught in the Fellowship of Friends it was to trust ourselves and to learn how to be alone-together with ourselves, not alone-alone with the outer world mirroring what has traumatized our inner world doors in closing tight, almost airtight in certain ‘key’ areas.
If you trust yourself, then, you will not become an ayahuasca movie star: I know a few and they always get their asses kicked by Grandma, yet, they also know (when you get them to the campfire side and access their conscience) that their ego is a rising and falling tidal wave that controls them in some way beyond what they feel deeper they wish to be (after the fact they’ve been otherwise)… So, reminders, reminders and they keep going on the path rubbing their butts;
its a very humbling and one of the most human portraits I have ever witnessed to see one of these ‘divinities’ or ‘dressed in white righteous ones’ bent over and being bum rushed by Shakti.
Please do not worry, trust yourself; the only place a person can take that imagined sense of “divinity” is outside their soul, which, ironically enough, it just the yeast that makes grandma’s biscuits rise.
Trust your heart and sincerity will always be your ‘demon’, so far as ‘The Golden Compass’ goes.
________________
TRUST
Thanks Laura, will check it.
On the same topic:
‘uno’ on the previous page #312 you write,
among other things:
“So far as not being able to access those places without ayahuasca, well, that would not be fair to say really; not every spiritual ‘Love Dog’ lives in Africa or South America…”
I might partly agree with you here, it depends again on what you mean when you refer to “those places.” maybe we’re talking about different things… maybe not. locale and substances, (I would agree) are beside the point…
“not every spiritual love dog…” ?
seems too like you do a little comparison of and against “something else.” another’s frame of reference for example, putting yourself into the psyche of these other “spiritual love dogs,” “Tibetan monks,” “Buddhist monks also drink ayahuasca,” and etc. that’s not a criticism… but it does come off sounding a bit like, in your own words: “license to talk about things and use those very things we have never experienced…. so to make a comparison with something else…” taken in context, your statement here almost sounds like an attempt to shut down the topic of conversation with your “heavy heart” (?) a topic of some discussion on the previous page has in part come out of your own experience with your ‘grandmother’ ayahuasca (now there’s a symbol… it is through the digestion / interpretation of experience that symbols come into use to convey meaning… the experience itself is, as you know, another story)… ‘grandmother’ has served here as your frame of reference or at least a girder in the frame… and you don’t do drugs, right? ‘medicine’ yes but not ‘drugs’… (I think I understand). I would agree with the implications by whalerider, elena and others that once you get the message you hang-up the phone… it’s a necessary part of processing the “information rich” experience, this part of the “trip” as elena puts it, may take years or a lifetime…. or more. if you’ve been following my story here you know that part of the reason for my involvement in the fellowship of friends was connected to my attempt to find a “natural” alternative to accessing higher dimensions of consciousness revealed (to me) after ingesting ‘medicine’ on the night of my 21st birthday. After that experience and for many years I operated with the supposition that it must be possible to access “such states” or “those places” through “a system,” certain exercises, physical exhaustion, meditation, chanting, breathing, dance, trance induction, whirling, yoga postures, sleep deprivation, fasting, sensory deprivation, body-work, “magikal” rites, rituals, and etc, etc… I was searching for “access” without the use of “artificial substances.” Well, I’ve changed my mind about that. maybe ya’ll know something I don’t but based on my experience, although it is possible to alter states of consciousness through what some might refer to as “natural” means, the states that are created are not the same and comparisons fall far short. as for the processing of the experience: post experience, there are realizations one is given to work with, maybe that’s what you mean ‘uno’ when you say “those places” — the experience itself is another matter — IMO. as I’m writing this, the face of a man I used to pass by when living on the streets keeps flashing before my mind’s eye… he was as they say “stark raving” but not in a violent or aggressive way, his eyes were “wild,” wide-open, it seemed to me as though he was “seeing” things about which he was unable to communicate — maybe he was a permanent inhabitant of “those places” as ‘uno’ says or “such states” as elena puts it…. (or maybe he was just “crazy” — whatever that means). I’ve read about meher baba’s work with the “masts” in india which might point to examples of individuals who have “natural” or in some cases permanent access to “those places” and “such states” but it seems to me, as far as that goes, the inability to regulate the “state” would be it’s own circle of hell… “regulating” seems to be where the plants can come into it… ya I agree conscience has a lot to do with what is revealed…. but it goes far beyond what we normally think of as “the personal.” (disclamer: I realize this is all coming from my own perspective and is therefore limited and biased). :~)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_(Sufism)
Jack (1),
Mine is hand printed out, signed, sealed in an enveloped, addressed to Susan Zannos and stamped.
My mail lady just left. I don’t own a car but if I have chance I’ll mail it today. Tomorrow for sure.
Yes, spring is here (at least in Florence), finally.
Doesn’t it feel great?
Time to wake up and come out of your caves, little bears, and you too Little Suzy, come on.
They are not good hiding places these days anyhow; you risk running into cultish people waiting for the end of the world, or even counting rhino poops (or, what’s worse, doing both at the same time)
Better enjoy the free sunshine and beautiful nature blossoming all around… and inside
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8tgIMB5rU9I&feature=related
‘ton’ ~
Thank you. The reference to ‘Love Dogs’ is from Rumi, this ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF4_KZfIfVI
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The using of ‘Grandmother’ for the ayahuasca vine is not my metaphor, it’s what ‘they’ call it, in the amazon, etc.
I believe when you say that I am putting myself in the psyche of the other spiritual love dogs, well, only if it’s the kind Coleman Barks is quoting Rumi… I believe, in the context to Rumi, that we are all ‘Love dogs’… Please look at the Youtube video, I think you’ll understand/feel better where I am coming from; I am most definitely not squeezing myself in the movie theater between any class of kind of person, actually I am right now writing back and forth with two people associated with guidance I seek, so, thanks for watching my back though (and riding shotgun), it can happen in here…
___________________
So far as “artificial substances”; the same ‘molecule gateway’ found in ayahuasca is produced by the human body, some have found that it is produced in several areas of the body, the lungs being one of them, this would explain the parallel that holotropic breathing possesses; those Tibetan monks are not hopping up in down in the lotus position for nothing, they are creating DMT, IMO.
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Yes, I believe there are ‘masts’ in America, actually everywhere.
Maybe the sense of the “shut down” is simply because it was written at the end of the post and that I was actually shutting down for the morning; yet, maybe there’s material there for me, a kind of ‘I want to have the last say and exclamation it with my heart.’ Very possible, there’s wormy little fellas crawling everywhere these days…
Did you know that the Hopi Indians are said to be descendants of the Aztecs? Now there’s a bit of a spark; maybe I will try to visit there this summer, wanna go?
__________________________________________
:.)
‘uno’ 8
you write among other things:
“…wanna go?”
ya, (hopi or aztec?)… that is unless I do the more responsible thing, stay here, work on this place so it can be sold. if i follow the pattern of the last several years, during july-august i lose my ’self’ on the road… i’m a photographer (among other things)… it’s a good way to meet people on the road, on-the-other-hand there are situations where you meet people you’d rather not. couple years back i visited hopi sites, “4 corners” is an interesting region but it can get overrun with the touristas that time o year… I was touring generally, it was vacation, no particular place to go but one destination was “the peyote way church of god” — on the way I got jacked-up pretty good by local police outside albequerque… the policeman says:
license, insurance registration…
is there a problem officer?
illegal lane change,
huh?
didn’t leave your blinker on long enough…
oh…
anything in the vehicle that can hurt me?
that depends on what you mean…
do you have any knives, firearms, or explosives, in the vehicle?
no, your honor, sir.
what’s in the back ? (points to back of truck)
step out of the vehicle… (radios backup) then asks: what’s inside the camper? do you have any problem with me looking inside? and so on it went… won’t bore with more details. afterward I did not thank him, his parting words were: “we’re” (meaning the police), “we’re not all bad you know.” my reply: “I didn’t say you were, you said it.” had a couple of “run-ins” and near misses driving through az. and texas… texas is a place I avoid as much as possible (no offense texicans). would like to visit austin sometime but don’t want to brave driving the rest of the state to get there. i know, it can happen anywhere… heard horror stories about driving lousiana… used to live in georgia, birthplace for the concept “redneck cop.”
if aztec, you meant ’south of the border.’ that’s another story…
“got-a-lot-on-the-plate” right now, can’t think that far ahead with much definition / detail. let’s talk about it in 3 months or so.
thanks for the good vibrations ‘uno’ keep soundin’ em out…
like yesri said, its’ about working with the memes…
all the best to y’all
Dear uno, whalerider, elena et al,
I have been wanting to share my reports from the field here for a while, regarding at least a few of these matters, but I have a hard time catching up with what is going here. I resonate with so much that has been said in the past few days, it’s quite amazing.
Anyway, for a start, I ‘d like to share some of my experiences with holotropic breathwork. Funny thing is, I first found out about it by renting a videotape at Abraham G.’s library, which used to carry a neat selection of movies and documentaries. I was immediately captured by Stanislav Grof and the things he was saying, and made an inner committment to try out his breathwork techniques. This was just a few months before leaving the Fellowship. At that time I was reading books about the holographic paradigm, and trying to make sense of things my own way, as I had found Robert’s teaching in so many aspects to be utterly unsatisfactory. So, like many of you, I was looking for new ideas to take me to a different place. This by the way happened fourteen years ago, and I am mentioning this to point out that the processes which you are right now undergoing at light speed took a much longer time for me to be played out.
To make a long story short, after years of varied and interesting but not exactly “mind blowing” explorations (yoga, holodance, meditation, sweat lodges, re-evaluation counseling, tai chi etc.) I finally got to the place where I was ready to participate in an holotropic breathwork workshop. I drove about four hours to a secluded place in the hills where the session was going to take place. There were around 14 people.
I didn’t know anyone and felt a bit shy, but soon a very pretty and friendly young woman approached me asking if I would be her sitter. It was her third time and she was very enthusiastic about it. What a relief. So I sat down close to her as she did her breathing. For the next three hours I saw this woman do the most amazing things. She danced, and cried, and laughed, and rejoyced, and gave birth, and moved her body like the most wonderful, lovely, free, unbound creature I had ever laid eyes upon. She appeared to me as a goddess. For most of the session I perceived that she was surrounded by a very palpable magnetic halo, like a sphere, about a meter wide. My fingers danced at its invisible confines, and I became so enamored with it that the facilitator had to stop me, as I was introduing into her experience. That helped to clarify for me the concept of boundaries in this technique. Breathwork is all yours, the others are there with the only purpose to help you bring to the surface what needs to be experienced. In that sense, it is a door, exactly as unoanimo has described. The day after, my own breathing session was just as charged with beauty. It was my turn to dance inside an invisible sea of energy, delighting in the most meaningful and moving sounds and images, and go through some very sorrowful moments too.
I came out of that weekend charged with a palpable energy and awareness shift that lasted for days and still reverberates quite deeply. That struck me as amazing, given the simplicity of the means by which it was obtained. Basically, breathwork is just you and your lungs and three hours of loud and powerful music in the darkness. Oh, and a few very friendly and reliable people, definitely a powerful element.
That experience started a journey of discovery which is slowly but steadily unfolding, where I started connecting and communing with energies of a seemingly transpersonal nature, in the sense that they are surely not coming from my “personal”, biographical awareness. These sort of energies had already emerged a few times in the past spontaneously, but this was a very good context to experience them more intensely. It’s always a journey to somewhere deeper, or higher, or should I say other, or should I say truly mine? I cannot find the right words for these states and encounters with the unknown. They may be the result of DNA unraveling, or we could even name them possessions. They are definitely bodily, heavily and ecstatically so, crushing and lifting one about as powerful waves, energetical rivers and tides. A body electric. And from that come so many insights.
This upsurging, this new rawness of experience in my case has also led to some very practical consequences. I have since left my job and started working from home because I could’t handle my busy lifestyle anymore. There have been some major life adjustments. For the past three years or so I have also worked with a plant teacher, and I will write more later about that. Gotta go!
Thanks for all your stories…
and here, straight from the mouth of the goddess
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lmUKzR9Kh-A
‘ton’ ~
Via your #270 of Part 31: you can send the Sheik your email request to be given to me and I can share them.
______________________________________
Long ago I drove from Louisiana to California and just about lost my marbles going across Texas (actually I think I did loose my Big Marble, the one you break the smaller ones with)…
Jesus! 600+ miles of seeing the same thing without any discernible nuance-changes was a bit much… Then came the rolling hills covered with thousands of cacti with arms and the little basket ball shaped ones, that was not altogether Christmas but it was better until the Night of the Living Dead Armadillos Tour… That pulled at the heart strings a bit, all those little guys and so handsome too.
I think I am a plane kinda guy, so I am going to fly to the Hopi and steep myself in their folklore for awhile; they’re rich in Kachinas, about 300 of them and their ant thing is pretty amazing too. Yes, in three months, maybe I’ll meet you in Aztec territory, I’ll be the one wearing the shirt with a picture of the Earth that says ~ ‘Where’s my Big Marble, have you got it?’
_____________
:.)
___________________
Susan Zannos
2520 Madera Circle #106
Port Hueneme, CA 93041
(805) 984-7975
(805) 824-5588
zannoss at yahoo.com
As Jack mentioned, there are only a few letters actually received. Other people have called or e-mailed to say they would be writing, and I hope that will happen soon.
The upside is that the letters received are very powerful–the clear, objective, brief statements of the facts about events experienced are many times more effective than rants and screams of outrage (we have the blog for that, after all).
Everyone who has ever spent more than a day and a half in the Fellowship has been witness to some of the shenanigans and chicanery used to extract money from the members and could send along a small account. Probably my favorite was the envelopes on the potage’ lunch tables labeled “gratuities for the servers.” Of course the servers never received any gratuities. I got curious and asked until I got an answer: the funds collected were used to defray expenses for the boys traveling with Robert. A tiny detail, but one that has it all: the lying to members, the use of any strategem possible to wring a few more dollars out of each and every one of us, the respectable masking the despicable, the elegant event and the rotten core…
But I digress. And rant. We all have witnessed something to report on. Please write.
Unoanimo and ton,
600 miles across Texas is a short cut. I have a friend who lives in San Diego, California (born and raised). She says coming to Texas is like coming to a foreign country. She too wants to visit Austin. Something must be going on in Austin besides Willy Nelson.
Willy Nelson’s bus (I dont remember if he was on board) was stopped and searched a few months back. On board were five or six men. The youngest was around 56 and the oldest was around 75.
The search found marijuana and mushrooms. I don’t remember whether anyone was arrested or ticketed. So, ton don’t feel too bad, even the famous get spread eagled in Texas.
The peyote eaters get a free ride through the state thanks to their federal permission.
So, I suggest ton, that you put feathers on your head and carry a guitar and you will probably skate through.
arthur ~
Maybe it was longer, perhaps the number 600 sticks in my mind because I created memory equating it with World 6.
:.O
arthur 13 “put feathers on your head and carry a guitar and you will probably skate through.”
that’s a good one. usually have a geetar, harmonica, indian flute and feathers on board, not on my head. what you describe is “probable cause.”
thanks zannos for the rant and jx for fighting the good fight.
‘uno’~ thanks for re-minding us to ask ’sheik’ about your ‘yage letters.’ while on the general subject, here’s one i recommend and you in particular are “sure to enjoy” (if link doesn’t load, “google” dale pendell).
http://books.google.com/books?id=eefFAAAACAAJ&dq=Dale+Pendell&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=dale+pendell&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=3&cad=author-navigational
lauralupa:
Thank you for your account of holotropic breathwork! I posted my experience many pages ago and yours mirrors mine. It is an amazing technique…accomplished just with the breath! (Not recommended for smokers, though.)
You can stop the process at any point if you feel you have had enough. And you are not left “burned out” afterward, you feel energized and peaceful.
It’s an excellent way to clean your pipes and get inspired NATURALLY and LEGALLY without risking Montezuma’s revenge or getting your ass kicked around the cosmos by your grandmother (although if you are white bread, you probably deserve both. No offense, unoanimo.)
DavidE - re your ref to “291″, if you mean Ton, no I don’t think that is the person you are thinking of. But go ahead and tell your Istvan Nadas story anyway. A lot of odd bulbs have hung on Bobby’s tree over the years and Istvan was one of the more incongruous ones.
And why not try out the Greater Fellowship site
greaterfellowship.ning.com
to see what other dusty memories are still kicking up dirt.
15 is newly moderated.
Ton & Uno: you can post your e-mail address here too, unless it’s a private one (in which case why not a start a new one).
Hello Whalerider ~
You wrote ~
“It’s an excellent way to clean your pipes and get inspired NATURALLY and LEGALLY without risking Montezuma’s revenge or getting your ass kicked around the cosmos by your grandmother (although if you are white bread, you probably deserve both. No offense, unoanimo.)”
______________________________
Grandma’s Defender? She speaks for herself in so many books, online stories and believe me, she can be incredibly NOT ass kicking, it just depends on your mood, true condition of conscience and constitution when you go to visit (Remember Neo and The Oracle? Like her and him… She told him what he needed to know, not what he was looking for.)
Joan Parisi Wilcox and Jimmy Weiskopf have written well balanced books…
I am wondering though how it is that you’re capitalizing ‘legally’ and ‘naturally’? I really do not get it; the stresses based on a very limiting man made judgment based on fear, ignorance and superstition superimposed on a gateway that’s been used for the most incredible soul-healing and evolution on the planet Earth for tens of thousands of years; the same goes for the ‘ways’ in which the other ‘Ways’ use the human body the produce ‘Higher Hydrogens’ so to create the door.
If holotropic breathing stimulates DMT production or a like substance (there’s got to be something being produced that opens the gateways for the soul in that practice which gets into the body’s rubic’s cube and solves to so the puzzled can put it down and move on), and since our body naturally produces DMT, then why the stress on aspects of ayahuasca that simply are not about ‘The Real World’? Otherwise all of us are carrying around in ourselves ‘America’s’ definition of a Schedule One drug, yet, IMO, I believe the production of this molecule is exactly what Gurdjieff speaks about when he says, “To create Higher Hydrogens” by super efforts (I would consider holotropic breathing as a sort of super effort)…
For me it’s definitely not an end all situation and I am now in the midst of understanding that it could be that our body’s are a kind of ‘plant’ too; it’s all under and above my chin, ‘As above, so Below.’ The Tibetans are a good example of this. We simply do not understand the deeper implications of the bodies our presences are encased in.
When I’ve heard Grof speaking, his descriptions of what holotropic breathing facilitates and the results; they parallel the ’spirit of the material’ I’ve witnessed with ayahuasca, though I cannot exactly say if it touches the same source because I have not done it, it’s on my list to learn and understand this ‘personalized’ Tibetan practice that Grof has developed; music and chants are also a very important part in traditional plant teaching ceremonies, Tibetan and Holotropic breath work.
In a world where pharmaceutical drugs, war, rape, alcohol, smoking, pornography, prisons, additions, possession and degenerative drugs are killing people and making them worse by exploiting and exaggerating their darker human qualities, I think I will stick to the ones who I can fall in love with and who show me my soul, not the part of me that is bound to reoccurring hopes, fears and desires that simply keep itself on the Merry-go-Round; I’ve been playing one foot in and one foot out of prison long enough, so, “Fuck the police!” as NWA would have it.
________________________________
L.t.y.a.
Correction ~
Additions ought to be ‘Addictions’; hey, well, additions too, do you really need that extra room?
I can’t do holotropic breathing. I can barely breath as it is.
When I drive across Texas I stay steady in world 96.
It was reported today in my town’s newspaper that coprolites were found in a cave in Oregon. Coprolites are human feces. They are studing the 14,340 year old fossilized things to add to the great tombs of human knowledge. Or, should that be great tomes?
Anyway, since Robert Earl Burton and gang study cave droppings the trip from Oregon House to an Oregon cave would add volumes to their collection of poopies.
arthur:
My heart goes out to you. I am glad to have made you smile with the “who let the dogs out” song and your memory of the young girl down the street. Remember, you can always let your dogs loose anytime here on this blog! Let’s be thankful that we are no longer FOF lapdogs, too. Have you had your morning toast yet? If my toaster shows up at your place, it would not surprise me. Don’t bother with the ancient, fossilized cave shit, get yourself some good shit. Take care of yourself. We all love you, arthur!
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Relax unoanimo. If you want to fuck the police, by all means, be my guest. In your dreams the police represent your conscience, we call upon the police in our dreams to wake us from a nightmare. Sound familiar? Jot down the next time you remember a dream like that and share it with us. Maybe you will have a dream like that TONIGHT.
I don’t really buy into Grof’s analogy of what happens in holotropic breathing, either. Also, the reason he studied breathing techniques is that LSD became illegal.
Grandmothers are by nature, loving and permissive and stern at the same time. I loved mine. She died. Tell me about yours? Did you know both of them?
The natural-legal thing is to make a point that you don’t have to break the rules or travel to some faraway place to arrive exactly where you are right now in this moment. Sure, breaking the rules is exciting and part of growing up. Staying within the “law” removes a layer of paranoia for the subconscious mind, maybe not for you, but definitely for others. It helps to make the trip more enjoyable if there is no underlying fear of getting caught, you know what I mean? Traveling to Peru would also remove that layer.
Unfortunately, it is human nature to only appreciate something when it is gone, otherwise we take everything for granted…like the air we breathe or the water we drink. That’s what the sages of ancient times keep reminding us of. Be present. Right NOW. So, yes, sometimes you need to vacate the premises and return like the prodigal son with a greater appreciation of what you already have and an deeper understanding of what is really important. The deal is, when you die you can’t return and appreciate your life when it is gone. That’s why “your life flashes in front of you” near death.
After so many years in the FOF, I used to wonder why some people would travel so far for meetings…to hear the same thing over and over? As ‘ton says, once you get the message you can hang up the phone, or as one Chinese poet said (Chang something or other), “a fish trap is designed to catch a fish, once you catch a fish you can forget the trap, words are designed to convey meaning, once you get the meaning, you can forget the words…show me a man without words.”
You bring up and interesting point…making efforts to get to higher states of mind. I agree that holotropic breathing is making a kind of super effort….but not like staying up all night to finish painting the Galleria so Robert can have a fuck fest.
#22 Whalerider
Word!
Does anyone know what is going on with Todd Milborn and the Sacramento Bee article?
Hello Whalerider ~
The first part of your post to me is indeed a surprise coming from you, yet, I do not know you so deeply, now I do.
You asked ~
“Grandmothers are by nature, loving and permissive and stern at the same time. I loved mine. She died. Tell me about yours? Did you know both of them?”
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When my mother left the picture I was 1.5 years old, then my dad had better things to do as well (although he had a room at my grandmother’s house and would visit once every two weeks), so, to answer your question…
My grandmother and great grandmother raised me from the time I was 1.5 to about 7 years old; my grandmother was a nurse who worked at the hospital delivering babies for 40 years, my great grandmother lived to be 100 and she took up the slack when her daughter was not at home; I figure that they both pretty much did a 50/50 shift with me.
My grandmothers continued to support me throughout my life when others did not or could not out of ignorance of my nature, etc. and when I went to university the moral support never ended.
I loved my grandmothers, they were the sphinxes in my life up until the last one died about four years ago.
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You wrote ~
“If you want to fuck the police, by all means, be my guest. In your dreams the police represent your conscience, we call upon the police in our dreams to wake us from a nightmare. Sound familiar? Jot down the next time you remember a dream like that and share it with us. Maybe you will have a dream like that TONIGHT.”
________________________________
Yes, I agree with you Whalerider; whatever is in your heart that could write such a thing to me is certainly a nightmare; I wish you well with it, it’s all yours.
__________________
L.t.y.w.
Jack,
I hand delivered the Susan Zannos letter to my mail lady. Susan should be getting it probably on Monday (04-07). I hope it helps.
Whalerider,
That was nice of you. I ain’t got the stuffings for my buttered toast. But, one day…..
Talking about Grandmothers and do you know both (asked of Uno). I dont know either of mine. They both died in the early 1900’s. But unverifiable rumor by me says that on my mother’s side all the grandmothers were Mexicans. One is suppose to have been somewhat important in a Mexican village. Maybe that’s why I was fascinated by things like druids, witchcraft, mushrooms, pyote, marijuana, Fourth Way, Fellowship of Friends, Ayurveda herbal medicines and now ayahuasca and cousins. Who knows? Maybe it’s all my imagination and none of this is real.
Rear View Mirror 231
I am glad that we share an interest in Robert’s choices of names and symbolisms. I explored some of my own thoughts about all the property name changes in a post a few pages ago. You mention the similarities between Apollo, Las Vegas and Versailles. IMO, they all seem to be different forms of isolated, self referential small societies whose hypnotic power is/was based on appearances and illusory dreams of luxury and grandeur for the few while sucking on the blood, sweat and tears of the common people. Please share what else you see in this connection.
Also, it’s interesting to note (oops, does that sound too fellowshippy?) that Isis the goddess also has a very strong connection with the moon. So he goes from Apollo, masculine Sun god, to Isis, female Moon goddess, and back again… isn’t that odd? They are such different characters! Maybe it has something to do with Robert’s very peculiar sexuality. He really seems to think that when he has sex he turns into a female goddess. Then Isis might represent him, and Apollo his ideal lover boy. Viewed from this angle, the Apollo rocket launched towards the Moon might have a strong sexual connotation. Well maybe it’s all imagination, like arthur says, but at least for a change we are playing with our own imaginative powers at deconstructing the overbearing delusions of our closest psychopath…
ton, jack
I have to play the devil’s advocate here for a moment on behalf of NASA: I recently saw the documentary “In the shadow of the moon”, and found it quite uplifting (pardon the pun) and at times even mystical. In fact, I recommend watching it.
I’d love to hear what you guys think about it.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uG4L7PL6Pvs
Dear Unanimo
You wrote:
So far as “artificial substances”; the same ‘molecule gateway’ found in ayahuasca is produced by the human body, some have found that it is produced in several areas of the body, the lungs being one of them, this would explain the parallel that holotropic breathing possesses.
Can you tell me more how this molecule is called so i can study up?
Thanks P.
Hello P. ~
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), also known as N,N-dimethyltryptamine, is a naturally occurring tryptamine and potent psychedelic drug, found not only in many plants, but also in trace amounts in the human body wherein its natural function is undetermined. Structurally, it is analogous to the neurotransmitter serotonin and other psychedelic tryptamines such as 5-MeO-DMT and 4-HO-DMT. DMT is created in small amounts by the human body during normal metabolism[1] by the enzyme tryptamine-N-methyltransferase. Many cultures, indigenous and modern, ingest DMT as a psychedelic in extracted or synthesized forms. Pure DMT at room temperature is a clear or white to yellowish-red crystalline solid. DMT was first chemically synthesized in 1931. [2]
From Wikipedia (keyword ~ DMT)
You will find the book “DMT, The Spirit Molecule” by Rick Strassman, M.D., right up your alley.
Your Welcome
Reading about all this ‘medicine’ the thought of greed keeps running through my mind. But maybe that’s just me- Mr. ‘I want it all and I want it now’
I do believe they are a ‘door’ but it is the same o materialistic misconception as to which way it swings. “Who kept the dogs out- woof, woof.”
I was also going to say something about the mystification and romanticising of Shamans, Tibetans and assorted indigini but the timer just went off and I gots to get the cookies out of the oven.
Or, you can go to Erowid and read all about it.
Hi Laura, Ton and all, been moving in and out! So good to rest and leave you in peace and me too! Thanks for the holothropic breathing story, never heard of it but must check it out one day.
Have fun!
unoanimo:
I fear you glorify the plant messenger more than the message, and that is a dangerous path, my friend. Ironically, I fear for your soul as you do mine. Isn’t that nice of us? And I could be totally wrong here, please forgive me if I am. (Namaste)
I deal with demons every day. Yours are no different than anyone else’s. Compulsions are demons. We all have them. Some of us hide from them; some of us run from them; some of us dance with them. You don’t need to add extra DMT into your body to face them; you can do so each night through your dreams if you really want to know yourself better.
Anyone can learn to pay more attention to their dreams. Just start writing them down, whatever you can remember. Put a notebook by the bed. Your dreams are naturally induced hallucinations. They are an accurate and honest reflection of your inner world at any given point in time. You can learn to unlock their symbolic meaning, mold them, be inspired and even regenerated by them…any frickin’ night of the week.
Of course, there are those who feel the dream-world is reality, and this world is the dream. Who’s to say, really?
So sure, yes, I wish you the most horrifically beautiful dream tonight your mind can muster for you. Why the hell not? If you can handle a good, healthy dose of DMT, what’s the difference? Good or bad, you will wake from it a transformed man. Dreams are administered by our inner shamans at the right time, when we are ready, in the right intensity, for the right duration, and solely for the purpose of enlightening you. How could it be otherwise? Do you think demons are just there to scare the shit out of you like a Hollywood movie? They are the original wake up call.
By Allah, you have the power to awaken in your worst nightmare and turn it into a paradise if you choose to do so and are willing to make the effort! (…that includes leaving the FOF, or for you and I, rebuilding our lives post-divorce) It won’t happen on the first few attempts. You have to practice your medicine. You cannot do that when your mind is in the grip of a powerful psychoactive substance, for that you’ll need to rely on a guide; you have to externalize or out source control. (BTW, dopamine is a powerful psychoactive ‘brain conditioning’ substance, too, associated with pleasure and pain.and so if you happen to be in a cult of hedonistic pleasure and sadistic pain then beware: cults have guides with hidden agendas.)
There are no guides needed in holotropic breath work, just a personal spotter to remind you to breathe a certain way and to hold your arm if you have get up and walk somewhere else to take a piss. (OK, so there is one side-effect of which you must be warned, if you stop the breathing pattern and get up suddenly, you can get wobbly and keel over. So don’t go doing that on half-dome. Give your body a soft launching pad.)
THANK YOU for the loving account of your grandmothers, your guardian angels, we could not survive without them. I only knew one of mine. The one I didn’t know died when my father was a teenager long before I was born. She was a farmer’s wife in Kansas most of her life and had eight kids. The other one was a solo vocalist in local churches, a painter, and had an incredible memory for world geography. Philip Morris aided in her early demise.
I am sincerely sorry to hear about the loss of your mother. You gained two.
unoanimo:
One more thing, I almost forgot, here I get to deal with angels every day too, thanks in part to you.
lauralupa:
I love your mind, girl. The sun-moon-sun thing really got me going.
From what perspective does a person experience the sun and moon exchanging places? That would be from the Earth, Bob, people living on the Earth. For all of the fucker’s grandiosity about being such an exalted high being…communing with the idolatrous “gods”, his perspective is still that of an earthling gazing at the sky with a goddess within, as we all are, day in and day out.
unoanimo:
OK, just one more thing, ‘cuz you are my pal. To talk about your grandmothers…you had to talk about yourself. Isn’t that beautiful? That brings tears to my eyes peeling back that layer! That young boy without his mom only getting visits from his dad twice a week…I want you to know that we all love that boy dearly. We really do.
That’s my hug to you.
You send so much love out to us all at the end of your posts, please let some in. Love produces healing psychoactive substances, too.
Namaste
In earlier days not everyone received a good diet while growing up, nearly everyone but those in or near positions of power were to some extent hampered by a poor and limited diet and of course medical attention was at best often some kind of superstitious folk remedy. It would be unlikely that a citizen of former times had enlightened parents that would to go to considerable efforts to insure their children received a good general education and the kinds of aspirations and motivation that would send them enthusiastically out into life to make as much of themselves as they could. Good food, a low level of disease and a civil society has an enormous benefit to the intelligence of a population. We take for granted that everyone is more or less intellectually and psychologically capable and interested in a broad range of subjects. For the most part those in the industrialized countries of the world are raised well, treated well and in the main are good citizens and smart people. A prosperous middle class makes many things possible that were never really possible for the majority in past ages.
It requires a certain level of intelligence to be interested in the possibility of exploring the human capacity for higher consciousness. Those interested in such things in the past were either exceptionally rare individuals of the peasant classes or uncommon individuals of the privileged classes. In days bygone the fact is that there were few within the population with the necessary qualities and caprice of intellectual intelligence and emotional inspiration to look beyond the basic needs of life and explore whether this wondering personality speaking primarily from the mind was all that was possible as the active witness to life.
That is not to say that people of other ages were not interested in religion. A hard life gives rise to plenty of superstitious yearnings, but the human need for a belief in a benevolent and or wrathful supernatural deity is not the same thing as a realistic approach to rising above this talking voice in the head that usually believes itself all that there is. In some sojourners of our world there develops a deepening wonder if in fact there is not a higher potential witness than this opinionating internal commentator. This particular wonder is actually quite different than an interest in developing a good relationship with an all powerful invisible ultimate judge and arbitrator of all that befalls each man and life in general.
With a general rise in a population’s intelligence there will also be a general rise of interest in an elusive inner psychological potential that to some seems intrinsic but undeveloped in ordinary men. The perception that a man’s usual state of mind and usual state of being, though engaging and interesting, does not seem to be enough, and in fact in many ways the usual state feels definitely unsatisfying, is a perception that arises out of human beings that are functioning at the higher end of the human potential. In a world pressed by hardships, catastrophes and early death such interests do not arise in a general way among the public except in the limited form of worshipping a potentially merciful God that will hopefully make things right in an afterlife that is never too many days away from becoming a fact.
In modern life with so many fine and well-operating citizens covering the land the interest in a higher spiritual potential has more than just flourished, it has become a major industry. There is a bustling exchange of currency for little-known psychological and spiritual information and unusual experiences of altered awareness. And naturally there are many enterprising experts eager to make their fortune and promote their renown in the business of explaining to others how to develop their hidden potential and achieve permanent satisfaction in life. What generally happens, though, is that these intelligent citizens buy a course of instruction in a few of these methods designed to unlock the fabled higher mind buried within but because of their ability to rightfully assess their own sense of deficiency and to be fairly honest with themselves they soon find that beyond an initial flush of enthusiasm all of these courses in the miraculous fail to deliver anything other than a new set of beliefs and perspectives limited entirely within the purview of the usual constantly commentating personality. It is merely the exchange of one set of opinions and beliefs for another, perhaps better, perhaps not, but the inner wonderer feels precisely the same. This is exactly what these intelligent and well-cared for citizens want to escape, this narrator in the brain that always feels somehow trapped as a captive audience in a life that does not seem to really satisfy on a profound level.
How to buy the profound, that experience where the personality is entirely transcended and no longer has the power to interject its many complaints, judgments and attitudes into the experience of life? How to truly become someone else, someone with more wisdom than is usually experienced? Who owns the instructions for attaining such experiences and what is the price of such an experience? Again, what it is that is wanted, though not always precisely formulated, is the profound transcendence of this constantly nagging personality that basically has a very limited view of life and is in many ways oppressive. This is specifically the commodity that some intelligent people living in modern life wish to obtain.
The answer is that there is no one able to offer such an experience to anyone else for any price. Regardless how much consciousness one man has it is not within his ability to give the means for producing it to another. The only acceptable price for the inner transformation of ordinary human energies into profound energies is the development of such self-knowledge that it becomes possible to direct the thoughts, feelings and actions in such a way that there is a limiting of the psychological waste that takes place when the frustrations, longings and zealotry entirely direct the motivations of a human being. A citizen with the need to experience the profound has to learn to control the internal psychological and even the subtle physiological actions of his being. One approach to such control is the development of a witness that refuses to believe the reactions of the inner narrator, with intuitive aptitude a will begins to develop that refuses to take the active personality as the self and this change of perspective begins to allow an accumulation of internal energies that are usually used up in a crude way by the active personality.
Here is how to experience the profound: it is possible to find yourself in a collection of people each of whom is freely expressing his opinion about the nature of life and also about the many details of that life and suddenly you have a very good notion that you feel needs to be said, something that should be interjected into the mayhem of mouths, but instead you keep still. You realize that what you have to say is an impulse of the personality wanting to make itself known and that what it will say will in no way actually improve life, so you stop and simply experience yourself with this urge to speak while keeping the personality from doing so. You use the energy that was about to be spent by the personality to exert itself to instead become self-aware. Suddenly the accumulated energy begins to rearrange itself within your body, a wave of the profound itself sweeps through your nerves and a concentrated witness emerges that is calmly aware of himself alive in the fullest possible way for this one or two moments of existence.
This is one example of purchasing the profound, the control of speech, but there many such examples. These experiences are in many ways so subtle that those that supposedly believe they are interested in higher consciousness often fail to recognize these quiet seconds that gradually, accumulatively completely change the fundamental nature of a particular human being.
Transformation of the inner alchemic being of a human can only ever be bought from the mandate of the cosmos itself for barely a few moments at a time and such an inner transformation from lead into gold can never be sold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ACgXvMVZZU
Hello Whalerider ~
Thank you.
You wrote to me ~
“I fear you glorify the plant messenger more than the message…”
and ~
“I am sincerely sorry to hear about the loss of your mother. You gained two.”
______________
Not to pick at any scabs, really Whalerider, though I must be absolutely truthful towards you and say that you are not right about this… Maybe the ‘glorify’ part is mainly due to my needing to balance a certain ‘energetic thing’ that’s happening to me right now for about two weeks; I need to be close to familiar forces: thank you for the critique and look out for ‘refinement’… Otherwise, I have no time to glorify anything, let alone the very thing that un-glorified the glorified-sightseer in me…
The three ceremonies I took part in changed my life forever, physiologically and spirit wise; it feels like enough to last forever… I’m not a ‘regular ayahuasca journeyman’; it was like going to get open heart surgery on six hearts, not something you need to volunteer for if they get fixed.
I have been a dream-interpretor for myself and others for about 15 years now and have hundreds of pages; believe me, there’s a limit to what that level can show (no matter how strung out the interpretor is on Jung, Campbell, Castaneda and their own thing), I have verified it for myself time and time again, perhaps your equipment is different (?)
It seems (without my knowing it upfront) that I needed to go to where my dreams originate from (and I do not mean my actions and normal level of accessible and self-influence-able conscience), so, well, meeting that which dreams my dreams changed a few things… The subconscious is connected to other conscious things than oneself, IMO.
My mother is not dead, she just sorta left the picture and my grandmothers actually raised me till the age of about 10… just for record.
I wish I could share the messages with you, maybe that though would be glorifying the messages and not the work, then the work and not the worker and so on…
It’s a razor’s edge is it not? Death on one side and Death on the other and Death if you decide to show off and do The Split, then there’s the balancing act and the implied line that cuts like a razor… I suppose that’s the script that shreds itself as we try to sonnet-pronounce ourselves into one another’s hearts, aching or not.
_________________
L.t.y.w.
unoanimo:
Thank you for your sincere reply. Well then I was wrong, my fears were unfounded, and I am glad for it. Let us continue to glorify God.
Again you refer to going to the source of your dreams…in Jung’s travels in his unconscious mind he claims he never found God, The Source, there but only His/Her ‘landing pad”. The rest is up to us. Have you found the source to be other than you own pain? I mean, that which dreams your dreams is really a dream too, is it not?…or in the least a very thin slice of a much, much greater imperceptible whole. That’s pretty painful to realize…that you can never really see the end of infinity. Pain can sometimes feel like it extends forever in all directions…anyway, that’s what I feel in my life these days.
Surely that must be the razor’s edge of which you bravely speak, yes?…that we are forced by a painful life, a kind of living death on one side, to approach death’s threshold to find the source of our inspiration, a liminal, bardo place where certain brain chemicals are produced…and where we get a glimpse of death on the other side of the doorway…and a glimpse of ourselves in the middle and realize, we’re fucked either way…your parents did the big spilt didn’t they? So did mine at age 19. That kind of showing off would seem like a death to a young child, too, would it not? One’s parents splitting up. I grieve for my children and what they are unconsciously going through. Whose heart doesn’t ache really? The bigger your heart gets the more it can ache. All we have is ourselves and each other right now. But that will one day change forever, too.
I think my equipment is the same as yours, we are all equals here. Perhaps you and I use dreams for different purposes then? My technique is not to interpret them from a book, but to let each person discover their own meaning. They have always proven to be an effective tool for me and others to get unstuck, allowing us to continue on our path of discovery, for the future is the future we create for ourselves in this very moment, yes? Only words are written in stone. You said you mother is not dead, well, she might as well be to you. Have you contacted her lately since your grandmother died? Was she at the funeral?
A long time ago there was an opening in ‘I’ for higher states: (the numbers don’t seem to be important) two of the states broke through while ‘I’ was making strenuous efforts, others emerged spontaneously.
They were moments of profound Grace. The simplest of objects were vibrant with meaning, life, connectedness. Things which had repelled, bored or irritated or thrown ‘me’ into despair now appeared wondrous, intriguing, perfect.
After four years in the Fellowship of Friends I was drawn gratefully into Robert Burton’s radius. The moments of Grace stopped arriving.
Within Robert’s radius we were whirled into a frenzy of activity, debt, infidelity, hurt, abuse, violence; all of which we balanced out with desperate appearances at expensive garden parties and soirées… corseted in serene and immaculate exteriors.
The thing that I know about Grace is that ‘I’ cannot grasp it. It’s revelation of the beauty, vibrancy, and perfection of all that Is; is concealed behind the doors of ‘my’ perception. The stronger and more grasping ‘my spiritual ego’ the more deeply buried it becomes. Many of my friends have experienced the opening these doors through taking ‘psychedelic’ (mind opening) substances.
Robert Burton told us that most of us would not ‘awaken’; that a state of permanent Grace was not for us. He told us that he was the only one, and that his devoted helper Girard would follow. He instructed us to read the works of a handful of dead people who ‘achieved’ this blessing. He forbid exposure to living teachers, who were surely charlatans. He forbid mind opening substances.
Since escaping I have spoken with or watched, heard, read the works of a surprising number of living men and women who are what Ouspensky might have called ‘crystallised in higher centres’. That they are ‘enlightened’ is not a matter of belief for what they describe matches precisely my own fleeting experience.
These men and women grew up in many different cultural and spiritual traditions; the doors of their perceptions were opened permanently in a variety of circumstances, but their experience is the same. Many of them have been loosely bundled together as ‘Advaita’ (meaning ‘not two’) but names like numbers seem unimportant.
I have noticed a tendency to slug ‘Advaita’ in some. I find this odd… coming from ‘us’. It’s so obvious that there is a lot… infinity even, with which ‘we’ are not personally familiar, and it seems absurd to knock this. The kind beings that I have met have helped me and many of Robert Burton’s victims to escape. And that is what this forum primarily is about.
In the light of this I found Unoanimo’s attack one or two pages earlier particularly unpleasant, perhaps because it is so representative of the ego’s obliviousness to the lessons learned beyond the doors of perception. Orations like “… that’s what Advaita does, it numbs the heart, castrates the ovaries and gonads and puts the rest on a shelf for safe keeping… It’s the equivalent of a mummification methodology for the spirit or a double does of Prozac and Valium washed down with a shot of Wild Turkey and shot-gunning a 20oz Bush beer or both.” Could be funny, appealingly iconoclastic even; and yet they express that Zealot within- that promoter of division, of ‘mine is the true and only way’.
Beyond those doors I learned that there is no comparing, no down-putting, no smart ass-ing at the expense of an‘other’, I learned that nothing is too worthless to be dismissed, because beyond those doors all is perfect, there is no you and me, no two.
It’s hard to carry this lesson into every day. It seems to be a law that once ‘I’ am firmly locked back in ‘me’ I lapse.
Certainly an Ayahuasca experience which I am sure is being rightly promoted, seems more with in ‘our’ reach than permanent awakening… or even those fleeting, quiet, glory moments of Grace spontaneously received.
Cult watch.
An estimated 40,000 people in the US still believe in polygamy
Authorities in the US state of Texas have removed 52 girls from the ranch of the polygamist sect led by Warren Jeffs as part of a child abuse investigation.
Eighteen of the girls, aged between 6 months and 17, are in state custody. The rest are being found foster homes.
Jeffs, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was jailed in November for 10 years for being an accomplice to rape.
He was convicted after he forced a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
The self-proclaimed prophet is currently awaiting trial in Arizona on charges of being an accomplice to four counts of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages.
Abuse allegation
Officials from Texas Child Protective Services raided the sprawling ranch in Eldorado county, about 260km (160 miles) north-west of the Texan town of San Antonio, on Friday.
We’re dealing with children that aren’t accustomed to the outside world, so we’re trying to be very sensitive to their needs
Marleigh Meisner
Texas Child Protective Services
After the 52 girls had been removed and half of them interviewed by welfare officials, a spokeswoman announced that none would be returning to the ranch. Eighteen were legally removed into state custody.
“We’re dealing with children that aren’t accustomed to the outside world, so we’re trying to be very sensitive to their needs,” Marleigh Meisner said.
Ms Meisner said the investigation had begun after Child Protective Services were called by someone who alleged a 16-year-old girl had suffered physical abuse.
The San Antonio Times said a warrant for the search of the ranch sought records dealing with the birth of children by a 16-year-old girl and any records relating to her marriage to a 50-year-old man. Officials said the girl had not yet been found.
No arrests have been made and officials said the ranch’s residents had been “assisting us in our search”.
About 150 people are thought to live on the FLDS’s 1,700-acre ranch in Eldorado..
The 10,000-strong sect, which dominates the towns of Colorado City in Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago.
Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven. Women are meanwhile taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.
Polygamy is illegal in the US, but the authorities have reportedly been reluctant to confront the FLDS for fear of sparking a tragedy similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, which led to the deaths of about 80 members.
jx.
Hello Whalerider ~
You wrote (Thank you again) ~
“You said you mother is not dead, well, she might as well be to you. Have you contacted her lately since your grandmother died? Was she at the funeral?”
________________________
I do not understand this approach Whalerider, do you know something that my mother and I do not? What information do you think you have to say such a thing, “she might as well be to you.” (?) Wow, that’s pretty heavy duty… Ok, I can see that its going to be an 18 wheeler kind of weekend, no skateboards allowed on the Interstate (?)
I was kept from visiting my mother (myself) up until I was 18 years old, then I could do it myself, so I did… She never came to visit since the 1.5 era: (It’s a long story.) I recently visited her before coming to Europe: it is odd I must tell you, we are complete strangers to one another, yet, the openness and similar humor-spirit is there, we traveled around a bit together; it was a tough scene, she’s not in good health…
I also know now that I carry carbon copies of her unresolved abuse-traumas within: she and I have allot of canned goods to open when I land on the West Coast. There’s a whole ancestry side of my family-story that I do not even know, I feel like it will be a wild ride to climb those ladders and visit their tree canopy city, particularly her two or three brothers encampment.
No, she did not attend either funeral; the family-life system in my forest-heritage is fragmented, the same goes for the family-death system:
some things just happen without our hearts and spirits being able to get into it and act other than ‘it’ is in the moment; this is a very mysterious thing, one that creates huge periods of contemplation, healing and a really big settling down into a level of common sense that’s just alien to me on one level, yet, cosmically right on another.
You know, there are some who simply focus on what others have done ‘wrong’ and not on the ‘Real World’, that the concentration on such ‘frozen facts’ comes from a very deathly and dark place of inertia and an unresolved trauma within that needs our light of trust and heart…
I feel that sometimes human beings do not want to believe that healing and change is possible, that we can indeed be a good white python and shed our skins safely, without swallowing anyone by accident.
Yet, within even our eager lovers this thirst for the pain to stay, like some canvas that makes life more relevant, even goes so far as ~
if it’s not in the present, then they’ll find something in one’s past to be pain-filled about, not noticing how utterly unfair it is to the other to be the ‘adult’ trying to wear the other’s size 2 shoe…
There’s an atmosphere that surrounds our traumas, one of them is pain-shopping for the sake of pain-constipation and not digestion and passing: we are perennials and all perennials make their own compost, others roots rot in a sudden stagnant pool of water they never saw coming; a damn breaks upstream, who would have known?
_________________________________
I liked Jung’s honesty with himself and how he lived his life simply as he was (he did not seem too bombastic about his status-symbol), though, as I find out all the time here on the blog, we all have different stories and experiences: and what he says he did not find, well, I trust he was telling the truth…
And on one level he is right, you will not find god in your dreams, I mean, the dream itself is a prerequisite that I myself would not necessarily hold onto to tight; I guess it depends on the experience, some dreams are not dreams, they are actual journeys, IMO… Jung’s story: it’s not my experience and certainly not anything for me to compare mine to so to justify its existence. I like to feel that the soul of Jung never stopped and possibly found out that, like Rumi said, “The yearning you have for an answer is the answer you seek.”
_______________
You wrote ~
“Have you found the source to be other than you own pain? I mean, that which dreams your dreams is really a dream too, is it not?”
_______________
Yes, I have, because there was a very old trauma that I relived during my second ceremony that I would never have identified with this ‘human’ life; this trauma had been created by an everyday occurrence in another time and life ‘form’ and stored away like a ghost in a bottle; reliving it showed me that we are presences embodying human bodies and that we are not as we might ‘think’ and ‘be’ from the result of that ‘thinking and acting like’ a human…
Is my present sense of self any different than that of a whale’s? I most certainly doubt it.
Many might say that mine was a ’symbolic journey’ (I know this to be absolutely not true because it linked up perfectly with others things that have weakly omen-ed themselves throughout my life leading me up to that particular insight and I feel that it also was not my sub-conscious taking those ’symbols’ and constructing a symbolic play):
though the experience showed me that ’symbolic’ re-occurrences may often show up due to a previous trauma having been embedded and born again: in the experience my mother first showed up as the ’symbol’ of the introduction to the issue, like a table of contents, then this faded and something much more vast, deep, spiraling down and down occurred and then it happened, WHAM, the trauma opened up and the dance began…
It is very possible that part of the influence that flows through us in choosing our next incarnation while hanging out in the Bardos is the trauma-seeds we carry around who are destined to blossom; it sounds pretty yet it’s not meant to be the whole story…
So, yes, on one side of the coin you are spot on, it is “my pain”, yet, what is ‘my’, when you’re connected to All? It’s a project and a lifelong (and longer IMO) dance to walk off the drunkenness that Rumi sometimes seems to be speaking of having found himself in a tavern, not knowing how he got here and whose picking him up later…
___________________
I was looking at an anatomy poster the other morning and found it interesting that the human brain looks like a big seed (an iboga seed actually, LOL) with its roots drooping down and imbuing all its stems… Then there’s all those ‘others’ (organs, muscle systems, glands, etc.) in there trying to get along with one another:
what are their dreams and ambitions I wonder?
Poetics… sheeesh! And maybe not.
____________________
Yes, my parents did do the “big split” and my father’s on his final third: I had two step sisters for about 2 years, then a step brother up to this day… I need to visit him too.
I sense that interpreting my prose-metaphors and paralleling it with my ‘real life story’ as interpreted by more of your own metaphors is getting me nowhere really; it seems that you are trying to justify something or make links that simply serve as links, but have no anchor attached… So we drift and drift, sketching the shoreline as we go; maybe I am wrong here…
I started recording my dreams about 22 years ago and have never used dream-interpretation books, it’s something that developed with an incredible friend of mine in the FOF long ago, she had studied Jungian Psychology and various other things; I found that I could intuit and make the connections… So I would write out the dream, find out as much as I could about the dreamer’s biography (and autobiography), what’s been going on in their life lately and take it home and do my mojo thing, watching for the mirror-factor and comparison thing, because what we want for others is not necessarily what they need from themselves and do not even know it.
To me the dream interpretation still has a roof though (by itself, I am finding out these days that it depends on the context of the waking-lifestyle of the dreamer).
‘Still has a roof’ because there are ‘things’ in us that sculpt our attitudes, levels of tolerances, mood swings, touchy buttons, explosive subject matter, depression triggers, impossible to be achieved expectations of others, unable to get beyond the argumentative level of certain horn-locking subjects, knit picking at superficial details and the like; superficial is a relative term.
For me, I had daily living patterns and habits that simply seemed normal and connected to being a safely, sometimes severely independent kind of person, until it compounded into an emergency; it’s a mystery Whalerider, it took a hellbent for hell divorce and three nervous breakdowns in five months to get me down off my ‘human form throne’, to grovel and eat the dirt and understand that I am inside one root of billions belonging to a very big something;
‘thinking’ oneself a safe fruit or seed is one stage, dropping on the ground when ripe, another.
I also grieve; I had a step-son in my marriage and I love him…
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I do not think my father and mother were showing off; maybe you could explain how that is possible in a divorce and forced custody case (?)
Yet, the pain in us does find a stage to create external symbols so to justify its living itself outwards and away from self revelation, so, I guess it is possible to “show off”… Maybe I showed off coming to Europe… If I did, it was not without its many conscious and sub-conscious supports, hopes and eventual verified unverifiable truths concerning love, fear, want and ignorance.
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Rumi says that our friends are not necessarily what they show themselves to be for you, but rather what they show while being in their company yourself to be for yourself…
Thank you for your company and please be gentle with the use of whatever personally interpreted information you have concerning my divorce story; absolutely no one will ever know anything concerning my wife and I, the forces that brought our hearts together and apart, excepting ourselves and those forces; I do not wish to sound selfish here, it’s just that ~
It can be a very loving an expansive ceremony to compare and empathize one’s own story with another’s loss and gain by that loss and the in-the-moment-story as it seems, yet, speaking as if we know something about another in a matter-of-fact way is a dead end street Whalerider, one which I will try for the rest of my life not to turn down into.
Some dead end streets have vista points, which is usually the ‘real view’ of the person’s heart you thought the street was.
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L.t.y.a.
yesri 30 re: “greed” and ‘I want it all and I want it now’
mmm… coookeeez…
greed is a “feature” of the times, in this culture anyway, it is a cultural thing, it’s “all-pervasive” and IMO a perversion of “natural tendencies.” I think we can we agree that greed is an abuse (not a virtue as the likes of a ‘don trump’ may believe). when the “human animal” is living “closer to the bone” for example in a “hunting and gathering” culture, what happens to greed? homer simpson, the affable “everyman,” is an archetype of “instinctive” greed (or would that be a symbol, or is it both?) an adult baby with an “oral / anal fixation” — hey that sounds like robert burton!
I agree “one” must want “it” badly in order to undergo the trials of “medicine” and then there’s no guarantee of what “it” is… the experience in and of itself prohibits abuse… that is unless a person has a strong masochistic streak, in which case, if the individual persists then an unbalanced condition only worsens and they ends up dead, or worse.
the expression of the experience can be fertile fodder for glorification and sometimes it can sound a bit like: “my ‘plant-teacher’ can beat up your ‘plant-teacher’…. my ‘trip’ was more profound and meaningful than yours…” and etc. that expression isn’t “greed” per se but it might somehow relate to the mania for “more” and “better” etc, definitely ego, “little ‘i’ stuff.” ‘uno’ puts it well: “I suppose that’s the script that shreds itself as we try to sonnet-pronounce ourselves into one another’s hearts…” the important part is what’s in the heart, important to remember the “script” here is a network between hearts…
thanks uno, good stuff, keep it coming… and thanks for your heart and words here whalerider. there are many ways to “see god” and as many perspectives as…
what is trust?
laura re: the nasa thread from past page, (i’m not sayin, i’m just sayin) the lack of transparency of governmental agencies leaves the door wide open to speculation and so grows an industry that thrives on “conspiracy” theories… hoagland’s “Dark Mission” was mentioned, there are many more like this with varying perspectives… google “project camelot” for video taped interviews. it’s food for thought if nothing else… but that’s just me, i read a lot of science fiction in junior high school.
jack 39 your post is timely, heard it this morn on the radio.
here’s a link for “must see” viewing — they’ll probably re-run it or have it on the utube in the future…
http://www.history.com/shows.do?episodeId=207853&action=detail
thanks all.
unoanimo:
“I recently visited her before coming to Europe: it is odd I must tell you, we are complete strangers to one another, yet, the openness and similar humor-spirit is there”
The true ’source’, perhaps?
BTW, your keen intuition is born of your pain.
“Some dead end streets have vista points, which is usually the ‘real view’ of the person’s heart you thought the street was.”
That statement felt like an eighteen wheeler through my heart, too, as all eighteen wheels screech to a halt at the cul de sac of my marriage. The view there is scenic, but not pretty.
Ever heard of the “crazy Ivan” maneuver? During the cat and mouse game of the cold war American submarines would shadow Soviet ones, hiding behind them in the sound wake of the Soviet sub’s props as they zig zagged across the oceans. (My father and uncle were in the US Navy Submarine Corps) Now, after a while the soviets caught on to this, primarily from information provided by the spy, John Walker. (Not the American Taliban) They devised the following strategy: suddenly and without warning, the soviet sub would turn broadside and stop directly in the US sub’s path to reveal it. Thus, if the US sub hit the Soviet one, it was the US’s fault.
My father who had top secret military clearance told me that on at least two occasions this resulted in the sinking of the USS Scorpion and a Soviet missile sub known as the K-129. The two sides learned to keep their distance after that, later developing powerful sonar that hurts the inner ears of my brethren, the whales and dolphins.
By blogging about my past, I pulled a crazy Ivan maneuver on my wife to see if she was own her own path or just following mine. Turns out we were on a collision course. Now she is on her own path, and rightfully so.
Thirty-one years ago it was passed down by our Teacher (Robert Earl Burton) that three days before and after the new and fool moons we could be affected by lunacy.
That major decisions should not be made, ie, joining the fellowship of Friends, proposing marriage or divorce, quitting a job, falling in and out of love, or leaving the Fellowship of Friends.
Is this still true? Well, today is the New Moon, and if you have been acting nutty lately, that’s why.
Thanks for your response unanimo.
Much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing all your stories and your ability to express yourself.
Thanks whalerider for your responses, as I am still grateful for the link you introduced to me “Get me out of here”.
Big hug for both of you and for anyone who wants a hug.
P.S. My name was a freudian accident and I am trying not to put my name on this blog for search engine reasons.
Hi Laura
this is all I have to say!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w9EksAo5hY&feature=related
jx
unoanimo:
Please forgive my matter-of-fact tone; it keeps the drama down to a minimum when speaking of such richly emotional subjects as our family of origin. I mean no disrespect to you or your family members. And I will for sure respect your boundaries around your divorce(s).
If we don’t allow our friends to challenge our deeply held beliefs, (and you have done your share with others here, as have I) then I do not know the meaning of the word.
You said: “…because there are ‘things’ in us…”
To me, this is emblematic of the inadequacy of the English language yet here on this blog, words are the primary currency for the exchange of concepts, and words convey many layers of meaning. (Will Strunk, author of “The Elements of Style” hated the word, thing.)
Things? What things?
Do you mean neuro-peptides? Stores of electrical impulses? DNA helixes? Or Alien beings?
Is this by chance also some of the remnants of the spiritual materialism that runs so deep in our consumerist culture and *pa-toeey* the FOF?
I ask because at the smallest sub-atomic level that our puny human minds have been able to penetrate, what scientists have “discovered” is that in the ‘reality’ of that micro-cosmos matter exists only as a probability, and that what really ‘matters’, what holds the universe together is the intangible, invisible relationships between particles, not the particles themselves. Even though we feel things with our hands, they do not exist. (Now that’s a Class A paradox.)
But your “things in us” isn’t material or is it?
Science informs us that at the subatomic level there is more ‘empty’ space that anything else. Does not that ‘empty’ space actually house a vast matrix of invisible threads of relationships, spanning across multi-dimensions of time and space? It would seem so. If we ascribe to the philosophy of “as above, so below”, then “as below, so above” must hold true, and thus our spirituality needs to reflect that reality in order to approximate the truth. Maybe we can somehow contain the intangible, too.
So I would argue, (solely for the sake of philosophic argument and not as a personal attack), that although your experiences of the “source” were compelling and convincing to you (albeit while you where under the influence of a medicine/drug) …what is real is the invisible connection you felt, not that ultra-thin slice of great magnitude that you defend called the source. There is really nothing firm to hold onto, and you will drive yourself mad attempting to do so. It’s just too big.
That particular spot that you touched (or touched you) on the source is long gone, existed briefly just for you, and only your relationship with it really exists…what you learned, incorporated, and put to use…is the thread that keeps one connected. Just like with our dead or missing relatives.
We are sourced from our mothers.
before continuing i want to pay proper and due respect and obeances, to those denizens and gods of the blog who have come before and who have been here from “the beginning.” i offer an oblation to the sheik, “bruce almighty” and all others, in the spirit of “linux” amen.
‘halftruth’ 36 i don’t disagree with your assessments… you write among other things:
“It requires a certain level of intelligence to be interested in the possibility of exploring the human capacity for higher consciousness. Those interested in such things in the past were either exceptionally rare individuals of the peasant classes or uncommon individuals of the privileged classes.”
I would add here that during certain epochs and under ‘certain’ circumstances, ‘those’ you refer to here might have been accused of ‘witchcraft’ and been burnt-at-the-stake, drowned-on-the-dunking-stool, or otherwise tortured-unto-death. Also you write of a: “talking voice in the head”… julian jaynes has some interesting things to say on the topic in the “origins of consciousness and the bicameral mind” but maybe that’s where this riff comes from? as for the rest of your post i’ll have to get back to you on it greg… er, ‘halftruth’ — mostly, i address you here because i like to ’say’ yer name: i just walked past 1/2 of a telephone conversation that was going like this: “if obama gets elected…” like i said, i was walking past and didn’t hear the rest, much less the other side of the conversation… o, wait, from downstairs i am hearing something: “about the war” and the word “bullshit” is filtering through…
arthur 43 you rote: “Thirty-one years ago it was passed down by our Teacher (Robert Earl Burton) that three days before and after the new and fool moons we could be affected by lunacy.”
first of all, I would like to take full responsibility for my own lunacy… I cannot “blame” the moon but do give credit where credit is due… can we at least change the language here, if not the point of view? I do not think of this bit-o-wisdom in the same terms you put it here: “passed down by our teacher.” what you refer to (periods of “lunacy”) was/is passed down by THE MOON ITSELF… I consider the condition of the moon’s relationship to the earth true apriori: that is, before (and irrespective of) “robert burton” and or anything he says — though robert burton may have been the first place you heard it… the moon’s effect/affect on the liquid nature of earth and the humans who are, if nothing else predominantly liquid in nature, is old news by now… maybe it’s not often thought about but the “ancients” knew it, it’s ‘by no means’ a new or recent concept and it most certainly didn’t originate with “our teacher” as you phrase it. can i suggest in general here, that any “truisms” this creature, this gollum, has managed to latch onto, for the use of it’s own purposes, be re-examined and in the process of examination, to give credit where it is due. I would also “say” and request in this connection that robert burton not be referred to here as “our teacher” — you can speak for yourself as far as that goes.
i got a little distracted but jest to go back to a question in a previous post — and i don’t mean to break-up the love that’s flowing here… but… in a more “traditional culture” such as the ‘hunting/gathering’ situation suggested, co-operation — by and of necessity — replaces greed. if that’s an idealized, ‘romantic’ view, i blame it on reading too much “indian lore,” daniel quinn, and related stuff. inter-tribal conflicts notwithstanding, it makes sense that for “primitive” cultures, successful survival depends upon a high degree of cooperation amongst “tribe” members. historically speaking, strictly agrarian societies relied on cooperation, but the simple exchange of goods accelerated with the ‘industrial revolution’ and concomitant ‘mass production’ where, in the name of realizing “profit” a “side-business” grows up involving “need-creation” through certain “marketing techniques,” advertising, etc… that brings us back to the subject of hypnotism as a means of creating and controlling “the market” and a culture, “our culture” of “depersonalization.” (see “Century of the Self” on the utube - in 24 episodes!). now we have capitalism using “democracy” as a code word in the interest of creating “free markets,” leading to military-industrial involvement, trillions of tax dollars that go into “government contracts” (a recent example in the news re: your-tax dollars-at-work is “Blackwater” the mercenary outfit)… the definition of fascism includes collusion of government with big-business and just to prove the point we have exhibit “A”: the greed and excesses of corporations like exon with those “big-oil boys” in office –”mission accomplished” — ya, right. the concept for the corporation grew out of organic co-operation between and amongst individuals… the irony would be rich if only the consequences were less tragic.
‘jack’ 45: am sure u have more to “say” but if i may chime in thanks for the most entertaining rammsteining amerika.
and what would blogging be (?)
without a little nostalgia?
james (and others) you may have seen this,
nevertheless it’s seems 2 b
good historical overview —
see the whole thing if you haven’t already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAcC1iBXT8Q
39 is newly moderated.
Hello Sea ~
You wrote ~
“In the light of this I found Unoanimo’s attack one or two pages earlier particularly unpleasant, perhaps because it is so representative of the ego’s obliviousness to the lessons learned beyond the doors of perception.”
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Yes: I absolutely agree with you, that’s why I emailed the Sheik the same day and asked him to remove both posts, which he did not do (due) to being on vacation… I have not gone back to check if those ‘homicide outlines’ are still in the Blog-street…
I sincerely apologize to you and those Advaita persons; it was a whirlwind of hades blowing through my soul and well, the feces got deep and that was a gas bubble from the corpse of my rotting ego that I was dragging back from my final ‘cookie convention’ with the Oracle; again, I apologize and hope the Sheik reads this and those emails long ago skipped.
Thank you for your post.
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:.)
Hardtruth (36) “You realize that what you have to say is an impulse of the personality wanting to make itself known and that what it will say will in no way actually improve life, so you stop and simply experience yourself with this urge to speak while keeping the personality from doing so.”
Thank you Hardtruth for the clean style and your punctual description of letting go of an identification. Thank you also for your softness of tone. I have only one question where you say: “…and that what it will say will in no way actually improve life.”
What makes you think that what it will say will in no way actually improve life? Or make it worse? Wouldn’t you agree that if words had no power Robert would have had a great more difficulty to brainwash us? That students have some how managed to become oblivious of what Robert does, how he lives and treats them to idolize him for the things he says? It is one of the signs of idolatry: People no longer look at the facts but hold on to the imaginary picture. “Common sense” becomes oblivious.
Words have as much power as the Sun that turns us every morning because they point us in a direction where the speaker wishes to take us. I’ve been throwing up more than speaking but when we sometimes manage to speak here, we are priceless. That speech has become another meaningless act for the majority does not speak about speech but about the majority. We do not know how to value another human being, there is nothing surprising about the fact that we know even less how to value the power of words.
It is lovely to hear the cleanliness and elegance of your post. In its objectivity it lacks warmth as you hide almost detached from what you are saying but there is much warmth in its desire to communicate. Its tone reveals the refinement of your struggle. Whether you are Greg or somebody else, the public square welcomes you.
Uno, I’ve been much enjoying your personal story. Mishima I believe was raised by his grandmother which might have something to do with his attachment to the culture’s essence. In time, it is wonderful to realize that it does not matter how life organizes where one receives love from, it comes in different hands and the fact that it doesn’t come from one’s parents tells us about the suffering of our age. It can then guarantee that sooner or later we’ll be tempted to forgive them, our ancestors and our time as much as our selves and our children.
Does it not seem to you that we are being tamed by the expert whip of life?
Whalerider. (42)
So I would argue, (solely for the sake of philosophic argument and not as a personal attack), that although your experiences of the “source” were compelling and convincing to you (albeit while you where under the influence of a medicine/drug) …what is real is the invisible connection you felt, not that ultra-thin slice of great magnitude that you defend called the source. There is really nothing firm to hold onto, and you will drive yourself mad attempting to do so. It’s just too big.
……
We are sourced from our mothers.
Don’t know what your experience is Rider, but it is difficult to ride a whale if you don’t find the Ocean a source! Or rain drops, particles of the Great Water and fire, little drops of Sunshine. Humans fall through miracles from the Ocean of Love where all of us contain each one of us. One is All, All is One.
Each day we are meant to actualize the magic of unity, by establishing and reinforcing the connections between each other, for the simple joy of the one being who drops us for the pleasure of seing us regain him like yo-yos!
Life is a game of hide and seek in which children play at becoming what they already are.
Death, for us: a game in which adults play at actualizing their aim to return, eager to be at every ritual of mankind.
The cosmos pours itself freely into death and life, re-adjusting a perfect dialogue like a mirror in which the flesh is only the physical expression of death’s energy. Life is death’s rose. When a human being dies, they make a party in the other side to welcome the newcomer returning home. We greet them goodbye with flowers so that they remember what life really was.
Human beings are the story of love between life and death. A permanent flirting between matter and energy; songs of light; a music of eternity; the hand of the infinite returning infinitely like a rose.
The cosmos pours itself down from within us and when we can catch its wind like kites in the sky, it leaves a tail of grace, of gratitude, of the grandeur that contains each one of us. The more one remember one’s self, the more of US re-members itself. Then one knows who one belongs to and understands why any form of harm on any one of us is a great harm to the Us in all of us. Perhaps we’ve called it, The Spirit.
P.S. Thank you Sea for a joyful dip in the Ocean.
Unoanimo said
“I’ve been playing one foot in and one foot out of prison long enough,”
________
Thank you for those words, unoanimo.
ton:
Now I understand why I kept getting out of my car with it still in gear and the motor running all those times. Great clip.
It also touched off an interesting memory. When I was living in Mexico for a short time, almost 40 years ago, I met a very interesting Indian gentleman who shared with me some very powerful cannabis. After smoking it, we had been sitting in silence for quite some time when he turned to me and said,
“The hemp plant is better used stretched just a few inches above the ground to stumble over, than it is as rope for climbing.”