Saturday, July 26, 2014

The quick and the invisible

A small wild creature is a good example. The chipmunk will freeze, not flee, when he senses a threat. For him stillness is invisibility. 

Is it too much of a stretch to see the motion of wild creatures as words-- the tumbling of discrete particles, blocks, in a space which is cerebral, the eternal seeming flow, of verbal entities -- constant, heedless, only occasionally purposive. 

Invisibility is safety in a hawk eat rodent world. But such refuge is temporary. He must move to hunt, to survive, interact with the world around him. Man must speak to move, interact, at another level, also.
But it is only the quiet which makes possible the appearance of a chipmunk god.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Language and the fresh

Language is something others speak, and so do you ---- otherwise it would be incomprehensible and not a means of communication between people. So words are not new-- how could they then function between people.  Normally. This is a kind of tyranny for people trying to 'wake-up', in Gurdjeffian terminology, to 'evolve faster than the rest of humanity' in the phraseology of Jan Cox. 

The tyranny of course is not really verbal. But it can be sensible to consider it  from that angle at the moment. An initial question, for a teacher is how to communicate the how and how, of a quest, if the goal is to diminish the power of the linguistic web on particular node, the individual person.

In the case of both Gurdjieff and Cox new maps describing the world were a part of their approach. Jan Cox in his teaching also demonstrated the meaning of new maps--verbal constructs pointing to shared realities-- by himself, from the stage, just remaking maps every few days, or weeks. A few maps, such as, using the term 'bridges' to convey something similar to chakra [points] may have lasted several months. Since Jan's maps were based on direct seeing, rather than the words of others, he was not just relabeling certain realities. His bridges conveyed a fresh understanding of certain realities.

My own purpose is to take a deeper look here at the specific way in which ordinary language, cliches, can be harmful to the sober seeker. 
I will take a word "consciousness," and a phrase, 'kicking your butt,' and analyze both of these to perhaps point to what is lost when words are used carelessly. 

So check back for part 2. 

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

What is so scary about This Kind of Stuff

This phenomenon, though not stressed by Jan Cox, I don't think, is called in a history of mysticism, Latin equivalent of " a horror of vacuum." I am calling it the scary side of This Kind of Stuff.  It must exist, or something else in the category of scary things --, else why isn't everybody awake. Why isn't anyone awake?  This is an ordinary level of mentation type of question, wherein we pretend that binary thought has a usefulness beyond the external world. Why would the concrete evidence of peace and joy, available to every sincere person who can follow the clear and unambiguous instructions for neuralizing (one of many of Jan's descriptions of self-observation), not motivate a cascade of practice and reaping of reward? 

Is, within the realm where words can get loosened, there a sense of the edge of nothing, which is commonly perceived by the ordinary mind, as 'scary.' Talking about phenomenal reality here. It is an interesting question because the effects are rather the opposite according to proponents of the practice of self-observation. Might have to put on your deerstalker, for this one ---- or take it off:



Sunday, July 20, 2014

A Just Metaphor

A recent popular science article discusses La Grange points. These are empty areas in space where various forces balance out, leaving a physical spot with no or little gravity. Such a point must be vacant of physical bodies, but precisely located among certain  trajectories. (Just read the article, okay.) . If you think of words as bodies in space, from dust to rocks to spinning suns, the goal of the teachers of mystical technique, throughout the millenia, could perhaps be described, as getting the students to see LA GRANGE POINTS. Then comes the hard part. But--- to get the student to see these vacant spots, that is first task of a teacher.

Finally we have a just metaphor, that just barely points at what Jan Cox wanted his students to see---
And remember.