Regarding my father's death bed discourse that used the language of recurrence, I've now remembered that I introduced him to the ideas of recurrence sometime in the mid-nineties. It's interesting that he never mentioned it after that, but it nevertheless seemed to have become something he adopted in his thinking about life and death in the last twelve years or so. It is evidence that a short talk or small remark can stay inside a person. One evening where I discourse on time in the language of recurrence to my dad and it comes out in a dramatic lucid discourse from him just before he dies. It is also evidence that evangelising the faith to a person may have more impact in them than you can know. Even just a remark.
I also realized I was the one "by the fireplace." This was a mysterious thing my father was saying in his last days. The person "by the fireplace."
When I was deeply into my initial Work stage (which is the main stage for all practical purposes when you connect with the Work in a real way) I would come in from long walks, filled with higher energy, and I'd stand on the bricks of the fireplace (sometimes; enough times to remember it) and talk to my mother and father whose chairs sort of faced the fireplace. (I was conscious at the time of feeling - and looking - like a prophet.) I remember, in a way geared for their understanding, talking about religion and time and death. This was when my father heard of the ideas he was repeating on his death bed. But that it came out of him then, is rather remarkable. It may be just that the ideas are universal truth, he'd come into contact with them, and so he could express them because he had a language to express them.
The Bible has room for recurrence since the Bible doesn't say what happens to people who are not believers at death. They don't go to hell (that is reserved for people who are judged to go there at the Last Judgment at the end of the world). People of faith go to be with God in heaven. People who die and who currently have no faith in their Creator and Saviour...the Bible is silent on them. Where they go at death, anyway. It says they go to Hades. Plato's Myth of Er describes a kind of recurrence in and out of Hades (it though seems, though only seems, to describe reincarnation, but not really, if you know what recurrence is). There is room for recurrence in an orthodox biblical belief.
I regret greatly now I didn't evangelize the Gospel, such as I would do it, to him at any time. I admit I am still "ashamed" of the name Christ and the Gospel (embarassed might be a more accurate word, but that would correlate with being ashamed some too). Actually, too, I am a bit impatient with all the explanation required and people mechanically assuming you're something that you're not, some common stereotype associated with Christianity and so on. Yet for the Spirit to do its work you just have to say Jesus saves. Or give some actual Scriptural truth, bold and directly. Don't worry about explaining yourself. It does the work. In time. I failed my father in this area. Though my father did see me with a Bible always, which is a kind of evangelizing. He did start to use language of faith some as well. "I'll see your mother in heaven." He said that several times. He also began to use the phrase "the good Lord." This from a man who my brother says told him long ago that when you die there is nothing afterwards.
ps: Thank you, missionaha, for your note on Parthenon_Agora.
pps: And thank you, Paul, for your note as well...
6/2/07
I lost my father yesterday - a sweetheart (a second part)
In the aftermath of it all I just have to say: "I'm a mess."
Remorse at not being more 'present' when I was with my father, spending more hours with him at a visit (that's a big remorse). Remorse at not foreseeing his inevitable death and acting on that by doing 'now' what I would regret not doing once he's gone.
Alot of utter stupidity. Denseness.
Remorse at berating him to be more "motivated" and have a better "attitude" regarding the physical therapy sessions, when it was all like emptying the ocean with a tea cup ("Oh, he stood up easier that time." Or, hey, he walked a little farther than last week. From 10 feet to 15 feet. Before his heart and breathing wouldn't let him go any further.) Meanwhile my father has lived this full life all over the world walking up mountains and flying over them, and was really no longer interested in doing that. I've done that, his "attitude" seemed to be saying. Now I can see he knew he was in the process of dying way back on December 19th of last year when he asked me to take him to the emergency room for the first time. He then went into a new state. Passive. (I'd said to the initial nurse who interviewed him and couldn't get a take on what exactly was mostly wrong: "He basically feels like something big is coming down on him, and he doesn't know what it is.")
A big Russian CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant), Peter (or Petra, or something like that) came into my father's room a few days ago and told me about his own father who had a similar condition as my father's, and he said, in a thick, thick, thick Russian accent, a big, stout, peasant-like Russian bear, gentle bear, said "Even I who am a CNA, I too saw my father like this in this kind of place, and I want him to GET UP! GET STRONG! I'm CNA and still I do this, and my sister say: "NO!" (and here Peter slammed his fist into his palm). She say: "He not feel well." So? If say they don't feel well, you can't force. (Smiling, Peter says this. Implying, "You love him, but you can't force.") (And he prefaced this first by telling me a story of a daughter who pushed her father to do physical therapy when her father said he wasn't feeling like it, and he died of a heart attack in the physical therapy room.)
I have remorse that my imploring of my father had gotten so aggressive on two occasions that all the staff could hear me (thus they sent Peter in to give me this talk). Looking back my father became intensely upset at this and had a very bad night after I'd left. I was berating an innocent dying man who was now without his outer shell to protect his essence. Like berating a child who didn't understand and just saw meanness (I want to stab myself in the heart as I write that). In my defense my whole motivation was to get my father to a level of physical independence to where he could just basically live at home and not spend the rest of his days on his back in bed in some ward. And we didn't know how long he had to live. It could have been three or five years, who could know? So he was in a critical period where he either made the effort to do it or he slid backwards to a permanent state of not being able to move. Hence my motivation in what I was doing.
Now, in hindsight, it seems so dense. I had my father there, with his essence fully manifesting before me. Once he no longer was in his daily life routine his mind was set free and his old 'roles' and personalities fell away and he was a new and different person. This is what I mean when I say he broke your heart just looking at him. I saw him as he was. Like seeing a child. So I had that. For four plus months. Five months and eleven days counting from Dec. 19th of last year. And I have intense remorse that I didn't see it fully. I have intense remorse that I didn't stay with him every minute that I could and do things that I could have done for him. Learn things. Listen more. Hug him. Kiss him. Hold his hand. Not worry about hospital and nursing home 'germs' so damn much.
Not leave him to spend difficult nights alone when he would get (I know now) his most disoriented and not know where he was or where his family was and not know how to get in touch with us. This is what inevitably brought on the morphine shot that should never have been given. Then again, the morphine shot triggered a very orchestrated leaving that was inevitable.
I didn't play my part well. But I have to say it's good that one can't screw things up orchestrated by God too much. What happened happened. The Work angle still puzzles me. My father was not just 'sort of' speaking in the language, using the terms, of recurrence: he was BLATANTLY speaking the language and imparting wisdom with that language and those terms IN THE CONTEXT of Work understanding. And this was in a manifestly INSPIRED STATE on his DEATH BED. (OK, no more caps.) This, by the way, may be validation not only of Work knowledge being real, but it may have been an epic intended shock to my system to get out of my lethargy regarding Work and what I know and have to be. (And if I were the person I was in the past frankly I would have used all the these last five months for Work itself, and I'd been doing all and more that I have remorse for not doing now. I mean, the strange me of my Work period before getting on the internet. I'd have been in his room at three in the morning so full of accumulated energy he'd have seen my higher bodies, we'd have communicated at higher levels. I'd have killed, so to speak, to have such an opportunity during my intense Work times during the 1990s. I'd have given my father all I had to offer, and now what a wasted thing.
I'm too hard on myself, I know. I still was who I am, and in my father's company it's not like I ceased to be who I am. But still.
Regarding, by the way, the recurrence language used by my father I can't get my family interested in this angle. He was even using house metaphors, so common in Work language. At one point he said, elliptically: "The house has been built." I responded: "Once the house has been built then you can see areas where you could have done it differently, but the house has to be built before you can see that." He said, pointedly: "Yes." He'd used the "house has been built" metaphor referring to his own life and his influence on, and efforts with, all of us, his children.
I have remorse I didn't stay for his entire death bed talk (can you believe that?) No, I was worried about his 'belongings' back at the nursing home and wanted to get over there to gather them and bring them home because his room, they'd told me, couldn't be held. Wow, so important that I do that, huh? right in the midst of my father given an inspired, strange discourse in what was so obviously his last lucid moment in his last dying hours.
What I learned from my sister regarding what my father did when I was away was after I left, and they all stayed and he talked some more, then they all began to shuffle away for the night, my father then looked around and said, "Everybody is leaving. Good." As if: "It's finished, and what needed to be done has been done." Then he slipped back into the state where he was involved with talking to someone we couldn't see, preparing, literally, for a take off like a pilot in an aircraft. In other words, his lucid state gave way to the state where he was in between worlds and preparing for the inevitable, which eventually came less than four hours later.
I did come back at 1:20 that night, as I wrote in the previous post.
God bless my father. What a strange string of events.
I'd prayed about it all. I didn't pray that he wouldn't die (knowing that all go the way of all flesh), but I did pray that he'd get better. Then I also, during it all, prayed to God that He would make it a gradual transition for me. For ME. So I could deal with it all in stages. And that is exactly what happened. Even to the detail that on the morning he was taken to the emergency room for the last time I'd arrived at the nursing home to see him in a half dead state; dead eyes, unresponsive, looking at and holding my dying father then. Yet he wasn't dead and he revived to do all the above, yet seeing that prepared me for seeing his deceased body 21 or so hours later.
The real blessing or grace from God regarding that though was getting through the initial stages of knowing my father was departing and having him no longer at home and feeling his absense and, though not getting 'use' to it, being forced to experience it while I could still go and be with him where he was.
I'm not involved in the burial arrangements or things like figuring out insurance this and that. I've been going to the hospital and giving my respects to my father's body. It's still at the hospital in the hospital morgue. As long as it is still there I'll be there for him. I went today and tried to stand under a big oak tree in the middle of the parking lot, but they had it fenced off, so I found a place near it where I could see the entire hospital in my view, and I opened my Bible to Psalms and said I will read whatever psalm I open to and it will have meaning. I opened to Psalm 69. It was hard to find meaning in it relevant to my father and the situation. I though read it, and I read it, as I went along, as if I was saying the psalm in my father's behalf to God. It was not what I expected (read it and see). It was like my father was surrounded by enemies and darkness and he, through me, was asking God for deliverence. I paused at verse 29: But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high. I said this for my father.
Remorse at not being more 'present' when I was with my father, spending more hours with him at a visit (that's a big remorse). Remorse at not foreseeing his inevitable death and acting on that by doing 'now' what I would regret not doing once he's gone.
Alot of utter stupidity. Denseness.
Remorse at berating him to be more "motivated" and have a better "attitude" regarding the physical therapy sessions, when it was all like emptying the ocean with a tea cup ("Oh, he stood up easier that time." Or, hey, he walked a little farther than last week. From 10 feet to 15 feet. Before his heart and breathing wouldn't let him go any further.) Meanwhile my father has lived this full life all over the world walking up mountains and flying over them, and was really no longer interested in doing that. I've done that, his "attitude" seemed to be saying. Now I can see he knew he was in the process of dying way back on December 19th of last year when he asked me to take him to the emergency room for the first time. He then went into a new state. Passive. (I'd said to the initial nurse who interviewed him and couldn't get a take on what exactly was mostly wrong: "He basically feels like something big is coming down on him, and he doesn't know what it is.")
A big Russian CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant), Peter (or Petra, or something like that) came into my father's room a few days ago and told me about his own father who had a similar condition as my father's, and he said, in a thick, thick, thick Russian accent, a big, stout, peasant-like Russian bear, gentle bear, said "Even I who am a CNA, I too saw my father like this in this kind of place, and I want him to GET UP! GET STRONG! I'm CNA and still I do this, and my sister say: "NO!" (and here Peter slammed his fist into his palm). She say: "He not feel well." So? If say they don't feel well, you can't force. (Smiling, Peter says this. Implying, "You love him, but you can't force.") (And he prefaced this first by telling me a story of a daughter who pushed her father to do physical therapy when her father said he wasn't feeling like it, and he died of a heart attack in the physical therapy room.)
I have remorse that my imploring of my father had gotten so aggressive on two occasions that all the staff could hear me (thus they sent Peter in to give me this talk). Looking back my father became intensely upset at this and had a very bad night after I'd left. I was berating an innocent dying man who was now without his outer shell to protect his essence. Like berating a child who didn't understand and just saw meanness (I want to stab myself in the heart as I write that). In my defense my whole motivation was to get my father to a level of physical independence to where he could just basically live at home and not spend the rest of his days on his back in bed in some ward. And we didn't know how long he had to live. It could have been three or five years, who could know? So he was in a critical period where he either made the effort to do it or he slid backwards to a permanent state of not being able to move. Hence my motivation in what I was doing.
Now, in hindsight, it seems so dense. I had my father there, with his essence fully manifesting before me. Once he no longer was in his daily life routine his mind was set free and his old 'roles' and personalities fell away and he was a new and different person. This is what I mean when I say he broke your heart just looking at him. I saw him as he was. Like seeing a child. So I had that. For four plus months. Five months and eleven days counting from Dec. 19th of last year. And I have intense remorse that I didn't see it fully. I have intense remorse that I didn't stay with him every minute that I could and do things that I could have done for him. Learn things. Listen more. Hug him. Kiss him. Hold his hand. Not worry about hospital and nursing home 'germs' so damn much.
Not leave him to spend difficult nights alone when he would get (I know now) his most disoriented and not know where he was or where his family was and not know how to get in touch with us. This is what inevitably brought on the morphine shot that should never have been given. Then again, the morphine shot triggered a very orchestrated leaving that was inevitable.
I didn't play my part well. But I have to say it's good that one can't screw things up orchestrated by God too much. What happened happened. The Work angle still puzzles me. My father was not just 'sort of' speaking in the language, using the terms, of recurrence: he was BLATANTLY speaking the language and imparting wisdom with that language and those terms IN THE CONTEXT of Work understanding. And this was in a manifestly INSPIRED STATE on his DEATH BED. (OK, no more caps.) This, by the way, may be validation not only of Work knowledge being real, but it may have been an epic intended shock to my system to get out of my lethargy regarding Work and what I know and have to be. (And if I were the person I was in the past frankly I would have used all the these last five months for Work itself, and I'd been doing all and more that I have remorse for not doing now. I mean, the strange me of my Work period before getting on the internet. I'd have been in his room at three in the morning so full of accumulated energy he'd have seen my higher bodies, we'd have communicated at higher levels. I'd have killed, so to speak, to have such an opportunity during my intense Work times during the 1990s. I'd have given my father all I had to offer, and now what a wasted thing.
I'm too hard on myself, I know. I still was who I am, and in my father's company it's not like I ceased to be who I am. But still.
Regarding, by the way, the recurrence language used by my father I can't get my family interested in this angle. He was even using house metaphors, so common in Work language. At one point he said, elliptically: "The house has been built." I responded: "Once the house has been built then you can see areas where you could have done it differently, but the house has to be built before you can see that." He said, pointedly: "Yes." He'd used the "house has been built" metaphor referring to his own life and his influence on, and efforts with, all of us, his children.
I have remorse I didn't stay for his entire death bed talk (can you believe that?) No, I was worried about his 'belongings' back at the nursing home and wanted to get over there to gather them and bring them home because his room, they'd told me, couldn't be held. Wow, so important that I do that, huh? right in the midst of my father given an inspired, strange discourse in what was so obviously his last lucid moment in his last dying hours.
What I learned from my sister regarding what my father did when I was away was after I left, and they all stayed and he talked some more, then they all began to shuffle away for the night, my father then looked around and said, "Everybody is leaving. Good." As if: "It's finished, and what needed to be done has been done." Then he slipped back into the state where he was involved with talking to someone we couldn't see, preparing, literally, for a take off like a pilot in an aircraft. In other words, his lucid state gave way to the state where he was in between worlds and preparing for the inevitable, which eventually came less than four hours later.
I did come back at 1:20 that night, as I wrote in the previous post.
God bless my father. What a strange string of events.
I'd prayed about it all. I didn't pray that he wouldn't die (knowing that all go the way of all flesh), but I did pray that he'd get better. Then I also, during it all, prayed to God that He would make it a gradual transition for me. For ME. So I could deal with it all in stages. And that is exactly what happened. Even to the detail that on the morning he was taken to the emergency room for the last time I'd arrived at the nursing home to see him in a half dead state; dead eyes, unresponsive, looking at and holding my dying father then. Yet he wasn't dead and he revived to do all the above, yet seeing that prepared me for seeing his deceased body 21 or so hours later.
The real blessing or grace from God regarding that though was getting through the initial stages of knowing my father was departing and having him no longer at home and feeling his absense and, though not getting 'use' to it, being forced to experience it while I could still go and be with him where he was.
I'm not involved in the burial arrangements or things like figuring out insurance this and that. I've been going to the hospital and giving my respects to my father's body. It's still at the hospital in the hospital morgue. As long as it is still there I'll be there for him. I went today and tried to stand under a big oak tree in the middle of the parking lot, but they had it fenced off, so I found a place near it where I could see the entire hospital in my view, and I opened my Bible to Psalms and said I will read whatever psalm I open to and it will have meaning. I opened to Psalm 69. It was hard to find meaning in it relevant to my father and the situation. I though read it, and I read it, as I went along, as if I was saying the psalm in my father's behalf to God. It was not what I expected (read it and see). It was like my father was surrounded by enemies and darkness and he, through me, was asking God for deliverence. I paused at verse 29: But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high. I said this for my father.
6/1/07
I lost my father yesterday - a sweetheart
My father was an artist with real talent that got sidetracked by war and a military career. He had interests in times of his life that I didn't know about.
I started to write a long post which turned into tedious narrative. I couldn't carry it through. My father died basically from a failing heart yesterday. His heart could no longer pump fluids through his body and it effected his lungs and so on. He passed at about 3:30 in the morning on May 31st. I arrived to the Intensive Care Unit where he was three minutes after he'd taken his last breath. My oldest brother had been there when it happened. My oldest sister arrived just as he took his last breath. When I entered she just glanced up at the monitor which was all flat-lined.
There's a long four-month story leading up to that. I was his principal company and companion while he lived in hospital rooms, nursing homes and rehab centers.
We didn't expect him to die. He'd been mistakenly given a shot of morphine in his care center where he was staying. The on-call doctor thought he was a terminal patient in hospice care. He wasn't. (I'm not law suit happy, but there may be one there.) It caused him to go into a half coma state. I was the first to reach him when they called the family the following morning. I thought I was holding my dying father. He couldn't close his eyes or blink or talk. He could just gently squeeze my hand. It turned out he heard every word I was saying.
The medics arrived and gave him some unique kind of oxygen and he began to revive. Then once in the emergency room (about the fifth time for him in the last four months) it all began to unfold. He knew he would die.
Once they knew he'd been given morphine they gave him a quick antidote and determined he was OK.
He refused my request that he try to sleep because he said if he did he wouldn't come back. He deliberately had two bites of some food and stated (we could see in the aftermath) that that was that, he was now finished with food. (His last bite of food was a piece of cantelope.) Then he went into a personality I'd never seen. A rather unpleasant one I must say. Like a mafia don interrogating family and demanding answers. Ending his sentences unusually with "That's all I'm asking", like 140 times. Or, "That's all I wanna know." One of the two, I can't remember. I felt impatience with him.
The doctor said he was well enough to be transferred back to his nursing care home, so I left to sleep some. When I awoke I, without calling anyone, went to his nursing care home to see him, but he wasn't there. I called my brother and found out he'd not been transferred yet. Something was happening, too, at that moment. He said call back in ten minutes. Ten minutes later I was told my father was "passing."
I jumped in my car and got to the hospital. Several family members were around him crying. I said I'd go get his wife, my mother. I left. When I came back my father revived at the voice of my mother and proceeded to hold court for several hours.
Like an Old Testament patriarch he gave words of wisdom, blessings, and prophecy for each of his children in order. Unselfconsciously (not knowing about such scenes in classical and biblical literature) just falling into it naturally. Very much out of character as well.
In the discourse I swear on God's Word he began to speak to all there the language of recurrence as it's found in Ouspensky's books. "Each one here has to look back on their lives and see where they could make a change. Some things you can change, some you can't. Some things are fateful."
"Did you say 'fateful'?," I inquired.
"Yes."
Then he mentioned 'accident.' "Fortunately none of you has suffered anything that didn't have to happen to you. No accidents."
He also stressed that it was good that nobody had harmed anybody.
He could see his life from a perspective of seeing where changes could have been made.
[I'm getting tedious here...]
Suffice to say just to look at my father these last several months was enough to break your heart. He broke your heart just looking at him. He tried so hard to get his strength back in physical therapy, but he couldn't. His heart was too weak to let him. And he couldn't breathe because of the fluid in his lungs. But he tried. In goofy machines, with several therapists and assistants helping and encouraging him.
I berated him when he developed pneumonia for the second time by being supine in bed too long and refusing to sit up in a chair. I berated him when he didn't show enough effort in his physical therapy. I missed much of his sweet and unusual presence.
I do cherish though now when, after physical therapy, I would take him for walks (push him in his wheelchair) outside to get some sun and fresh air. We could only go within a radius of the nursing care home, so I found myself pushing my father through generic parking lots, passing the backs of restaurants, going through pleasantly landscaped office building complexes, going to a local strip mall that had a drugstore. Just walking up and down the streets the care center was on.
Sometimes I would push him with my hands on his now frail shoulders.
Now I think, me and my dad, walking behind rows of restaurants. What are we doing here? Though I secretly loved it.
I would find quiet spots and have him call family from a cell phone. These were the only things to do.
Then I wheel him back to his room, transfer him to bed, and he would go to sleep until dinner. I'd leave. Then I'd come back about six and stay no later than eight. He'd be alone from eight until noon the next day. Looking back, after he's gone, I wonder how I could have ever left his side. Left him alone there.
You kick yourself. The context is changed when you know the outcome (that he'd be gone at a certain near date), but you still are hard on yourself.
I found out sometimes he'd have bad nights. Now I knew why he was always saying, "I can't get in touch with you!" The phone situation for him was complicated. He was stuck in a bed with little reach for even turning on a light. He couldn't figure out a cell phone at that point anyway. But in those long nights he was calling out for me. I had no idea. Looking back, knowing the ending, I am hard on myself.
When I'd arrive the next day the nurses would say: "Your father's been calling for you!"
My father had a sweet face. Handsome. All the nurses fell in love with him. An Air Force pilot, but now like an innocent child. My mother was the only woman he'd known. He was alone in life at a young age. Made his way. A very innocent man.
I had no idea he ever even thought about such things as recurrence, let alone knew the language. It may have been strange inspiration. He discoursed on all his children, but was mostly silent about me. The "wheel" he spoke of, I thought, was now no longer something I was a part of. Keep in mind this was a dying man speaking. Speaking robustly. In an agitated, "I must say this", mode. Language that had to be interpreted. Everybody cringing waiting for their turn. Brutally honest.
Nobody thought he would die several hours later though. I felt moved to come back to him at 1:20 a.m. He was talking just as rapidly and loudly but now only to himself. He was literally speaking of taking off for a flight. My brother was in a chair trying to sleep, next to him. I sat down and tried to talk to my dad. He was in his own world. He directed words to me, but I couldn't follow them or make them out. At one point I stood up directly over him, looking at him, and said: "I love you, Dad." He said, in a normal voice: "I love you, honey." I said: "You're the best dad in the world." And he went back to his talk about his flight he was about to take.
I left, thinking my presence is making him not fall asleep (see what the context makes you do?) I just left him, as he talked strangely and robustly to himself and to another imaginary person as I left the room. One hour and fifty minutes later his heart stopped racing, and his breathing stopped, and he died.
I had been trying to sleep back at home, but couldn't and had gotten up, and my sister came down the hall and told me our brother had called and said he was dying now. She left immediately, I had to dress and was three minutes behind her. I wasn't there for his final breath, but my brother said he'd been not very conscious once his heart had started to go down.
I was hard on my self for leaving him earlier. Leaving him to talk to himself. The context rules. I didn't know he was on the verge of death. I thought he needed to rest his mind and sleep. I didn't want to be a catalyst for him to keep talking.
When I saw him, I fell on his chest and kissed him and the tears flowed. My sweetheart father, my companion, my handsome dad who I had just begun to truly just look at and touch and help, was gone.
* * *
Today, I awoke at about one in the afternoon and took a drive. I went to the nursing care center. I parked and walked all the paths I would take pushing my father in his wheel chair, feeling him with me, and crying. I then went to the hospital, where his body still was, and just stood in the parking lot, crying, saying: "Dad, I know your body is still here, and I'm here. I miss you, dad."
I started to write a long post which turned into tedious narrative. I couldn't carry it through. My father died basically from a failing heart yesterday. His heart could no longer pump fluids through his body and it effected his lungs and so on. He passed at about 3:30 in the morning on May 31st. I arrived to the Intensive Care Unit where he was three minutes after he'd taken his last breath. My oldest brother had been there when it happened. My oldest sister arrived just as he took his last breath. When I entered she just glanced up at the monitor which was all flat-lined.
There's a long four-month story leading up to that. I was his principal company and companion while he lived in hospital rooms, nursing homes and rehab centers.
We didn't expect him to die. He'd been mistakenly given a shot of morphine in his care center where he was staying. The on-call doctor thought he was a terminal patient in hospice care. He wasn't. (I'm not law suit happy, but there may be one there.) It caused him to go into a half coma state. I was the first to reach him when they called the family the following morning. I thought I was holding my dying father. He couldn't close his eyes or blink or talk. He could just gently squeeze my hand. It turned out he heard every word I was saying.
The medics arrived and gave him some unique kind of oxygen and he began to revive. Then once in the emergency room (about the fifth time for him in the last four months) it all began to unfold. He knew he would die.
Once they knew he'd been given morphine they gave him a quick antidote and determined he was OK.
He refused my request that he try to sleep because he said if he did he wouldn't come back. He deliberately had two bites of some food and stated (we could see in the aftermath) that that was that, he was now finished with food. (His last bite of food was a piece of cantelope.) Then he went into a personality I'd never seen. A rather unpleasant one I must say. Like a mafia don interrogating family and demanding answers. Ending his sentences unusually with "That's all I'm asking", like 140 times. Or, "That's all I wanna know." One of the two, I can't remember. I felt impatience with him.
The doctor said he was well enough to be transferred back to his nursing care home, so I left to sleep some. When I awoke I, without calling anyone, went to his nursing care home to see him, but he wasn't there. I called my brother and found out he'd not been transferred yet. Something was happening, too, at that moment. He said call back in ten minutes. Ten minutes later I was told my father was "passing."
I jumped in my car and got to the hospital. Several family members were around him crying. I said I'd go get his wife, my mother. I left. When I came back my father revived at the voice of my mother and proceeded to hold court for several hours.
Like an Old Testament patriarch he gave words of wisdom, blessings, and prophecy for each of his children in order. Unselfconsciously (not knowing about such scenes in classical and biblical literature) just falling into it naturally. Very much out of character as well.
In the discourse I swear on God's Word he began to speak to all there the language of recurrence as it's found in Ouspensky's books. "Each one here has to look back on their lives and see where they could make a change. Some things you can change, some you can't. Some things are fateful."
"Did you say 'fateful'?," I inquired.
"Yes."
Then he mentioned 'accident.' "Fortunately none of you has suffered anything that didn't have to happen to you. No accidents."
He also stressed that it was good that nobody had harmed anybody.
He could see his life from a perspective of seeing where changes could have been made.
[I'm getting tedious here...]
Suffice to say just to look at my father these last several months was enough to break your heart. He broke your heart just looking at him. He tried so hard to get his strength back in physical therapy, but he couldn't. His heart was too weak to let him. And he couldn't breathe because of the fluid in his lungs. But he tried. In goofy machines, with several therapists and assistants helping and encouraging him.
I berated him when he developed pneumonia for the second time by being supine in bed too long and refusing to sit up in a chair. I berated him when he didn't show enough effort in his physical therapy. I missed much of his sweet and unusual presence.
I do cherish though now when, after physical therapy, I would take him for walks (push him in his wheelchair) outside to get some sun and fresh air. We could only go within a radius of the nursing care home, so I found myself pushing my father through generic parking lots, passing the backs of restaurants, going through pleasantly landscaped office building complexes, going to a local strip mall that had a drugstore. Just walking up and down the streets the care center was on.
Sometimes I would push him with my hands on his now frail shoulders.
Now I think, me and my dad, walking behind rows of restaurants. What are we doing here? Though I secretly loved it.
I would find quiet spots and have him call family from a cell phone. These were the only things to do.
Then I wheel him back to his room, transfer him to bed, and he would go to sleep until dinner. I'd leave. Then I'd come back about six and stay no later than eight. He'd be alone from eight until noon the next day. Looking back, after he's gone, I wonder how I could have ever left his side. Left him alone there.
You kick yourself. The context is changed when you know the outcome (that he'd be gone at a certain near date), but you still are hard on yourself.
I found out sometimes he'd have bad nights. Now I knew why he was always saying, "I can't get in touch with you!" The phone situation for him was complicated. He was stuck in a bed with little reach for even turning on a light. He couldn't figure out a cell phone at that point anyway. But in those long nights he was calling out for me. I had no idea. Looking back, knowing the ending, I am hard on myself.
When I'd arrive the next day the nurses would say: "Your father's been calling for you!"
My father had a sweet face. Handsome. All the nurses fell in love with him. An Air Force pilot, but now like an innocent child. My mother was the only woman he'd known. He was alone in life at a young age. Made his way. A very innocent man.
I had no idea he ever even thought about such things as recurrence, let alone knew the language. It may have been strange inspiration. He discoursed on all his children, but was mostly silent about me. The "wheel" he spoke of, I thought, was now no longer something I was a part of. Keep in mind this was a dying man speaking. Speaking robustly. In an agitated, "I must say this", mode. Language that had to be interpreted. Everybody cringing waiting for their turn. Brutally honest.
Nobody thought he would die several hours later though. I felt moved to come back to him at 1:20 a.m. He was talking just as rapidly and loudly but now only to himself. He was literally speaking of taking off for a flight. My brother was in a chair trying to sleep, next to him. I sat down and tried to talk to my dad. He was in his own world. He directed words to me, but I couldn't follow them or make them out. At one point I stood up directly over him, looking at him, and said: "I love you, Dad." He said, in a normal voice: "I love you, honey." I said: "You're the best dad in the world." And he went back to his talk about his flight he was about to take.
I left, thinking my presence is making him not fall asleep (see what the context makes you do?) I just left him, as he talked strangely and robustly to himself and to another imaginary person as I left the room. One hour and fifty minutes later his heart stopped racing, and his breathing stopped, and he died.
I had been trying to sleep back at home, but couldn't and had gotten up, and my sister came down the hall and told me our brother had called and said he was dying now. She left immediately, I had to dress and was three minutes behind her. I wasn't there for his final breath, but my brother said he'd been not very conscious once his heart had started to go down.
I was hard on my self for leaving him earlier. Leaving him to talk to himself. The context rules. I didn't know he was on the verge of death. I thought he needed to rest his mind and sleep. I didn't want to be a catalyst for him to keep talking.
When I saw him, I fell on his chest and kissed him and the tears flowed. My sweetheart father, my companion, my handsome dad who I had just begun to truly just look at and touch and help, was gone.
* * *
Today, I awoke at about one in the afternoon and took a drive. I went to the nursing care center. I parked and walked all the paths I would take pushing my father in his wheel chair, feeling him with me, and crying. I then went to the hospital, where his body still was, and just stood in the parking lot, crying, saying: "Dad, I know your body is still here, and I'm here. I miss you, dad."
5/27/07
New Thinking, Radical New Thinking
It seems that with Christianity, after you read the Bible, and after you figure out the doctrine, (and after you are born again) you then have to finesse yourself into the new thinking and experiencing of being in contact with Jesus Christ, via the Spirit (and so on and so on). No one theologian can describe it in a perfunctory way (I notice). They all try it from their own angle, usually not totally conscious of their task, and the reader is left getting alot of nebulous this and that, usually in pieces, here and there, as you pick them up, that don't connect readily to mind.
Which is why the Work is so valuable. It's the complete program, when you can see it. Along with the Bible and the deeper, purer doctrine. It all comes together. At least it's all there to be taken into possession and used to complete the process of sanctification, as much as one can, prior to death and glorification.
It starts with the effort to be awake (third state of consciousness) in the moment (something all the pietist Puritan types speak of but don't quite get at in that "above the glass ceiling" way).
Which is why the Work is so valuable. It's the complete program, when you can see it. Along with the Bible and the deeper, purer doctrine. It all comes together. At least it's all there to be taken into possession and used to complete the process of sanctification, as much as one can, prior to death and glorification.
It starts with the effort to be awake (third state of consciousness) in the moment (something all the pietist Puritan types speak of but don't quite get at in that "above the glass ceiling" way).
An Addition to the Post Below
I like the look of this blog. And the title. The title is eschatological.
In the previous post I used the phrase "I've been in states where I could just kill everybody". Clearly that was an overstatement. I've never been in such a state. I mean, I've never actually entertained such thoughts. I meant by it, I was in states where I was so pushed and pressured that I could do something stupid against my own interests, easily. And when I'd take the first step in that direction I'd experience an almost involuntary paralysis (which is also an overstated way of putting it). Like a higher being appeared saying: "No, not going to let you do it." And of course my own thoughts, being so refined from study and learning higher things and unburying conscience and so on (I'm not joking), would make me feel (and look) guilty
[Blogger went down at this point saving only the above portion of my post as I was writing it.]
OK, I'll try to finish my thoughts, which I am far away from the genesis of now. Anyway, that guilt and shame-faced look is a sign of consciousness of guilt to the world and so they think you're guilty by default and also a coward and everything else (I forgot what I was going to say).
It's all about being outnumbered too. One vs. the General Law. Whining, but also true in a way that is real for rare types (I'm not joking - type #4's) and not just anybody.
I remember I had a third paragraph that was on a different subject yet summed the post up well, but I've completely forgotten it.
Here's a new book: The Inner Sanctum of Puritan Piety (John Flavel's Doctrine of Mystical Union with Christ) by J. Stephen Yuille. Just published this month. Paperback. Inexpensive.
In Work language Real I is Christ. Here's a quote I just found tonight; the author of it is talking about Gurdjieff:
In the previous post I used the phrase "I've been in states where I could just kill everybody". Clearly that was an overstatement. I've never been in such a state. I mean, I've never actually entertained such thoughts. I meant by it, I was in states where I was so pushed and pressured that I could do something stupid against my own interests, easily. And when I'd take the first step in that direction I'd experience an almost involuntary paralysis (which is also an overstated way of putting it). Like a higher being appeared saying: "No, not going to let you do it." And of course my own thoughts, being so refined from study and learning higher things and unburying conscience and so on (I'm not joking), would make me feel (and look) guilty
[Blogger went down at this point saving only the above portion of my post as I was writing it.]
OK, I'll try to finish my thoughts, which I am far away from the genesis of now. Anyway, that guilt and shame-faced look is a sign of consciousness of guilt to the world and so they think you're guilty by default and also a coward and everything else (I forgot what I was going to say).
It's all about being outnumbered too. One vs. the General Law. Whining, but also true in a way that is real for rare types (I'm not joking - type #4's) and not just anybody.
I remember I had a third paragraph that was on a different subject yet summed the post up well, but I've completely forgotten it.
Here's a new book: The Inner Sanctum of Puritan Piety (John Flavel's Doctrine of Mystical Union with Christ) by J. Stephen Yuille. Just published this month. Paperback. Inexpensive.
In Work language Real I is Christ. Here's a quote I just found tonight; the author of it is talking about Gurdjieff:
"Because of his novel way of explaining things, because of his flamboyant and apparently egotistical style of teaching that made it too easy to judge him a charlatan and so avoid the searching questions raised by his very existence, and because he disguised or left out certain Christian dogmas that would have been unacceptable to his students, nearly every committed Christian has ignored him."It's from here.
4/14/07
On Showing Fear
Showing fear in certain confrontations. I have done it. I see it in myself. Yet I can also see that among average humans I'm not a total coward. I've been in typical fights in school days and didn't make a bad showing. I was aggressive in sports. But I definitely began to show fear in certain confrontations once I started to separate from life. Like, the kind of visual fear that makes people accuse you of being a coward. Here's how I look at it, and this isn't justifying anything.
I think when you get into Man #4 ground you are an extreme in the human community. And you are in a more dangerous situation. Spiritually. So confrontations mean more for you. Because everybody - the General Law - is against you. Nobody really is pulling for you or on your side. So you become aware that if you make a mistake you can get yourself in a bad situation (like prison).
So in those flash moments when you show fear you are really showing fear of the potential disaster that can happen to you in that moment. I mean, I've been in states where I could just kill everybody. That is as extreme as being in the rare altitude of real development. So, because I don't want to kill everybody, each little confrontation has more potential for disaster for me, so I flinch and blanche (is blanche a word?) and hesitate, and sometimes literally freeze, physically.
That is higher will keeping me from a stupid temptation and stupid personal disaster in confrontation with the General Law. And I just have to swallow the fact that the witnesses see "cowardice." It IS to them, anyway. But to me it's me not wanting to kill everybody. It's me recognizing a dangerous situation (dangerous for me specifically in a spiritual sense) and backing away from it.
Does that sound like justification? Because I just started seeing it that way. I was just thinking I'd become a coward. But the pattern over time began to say something to me. It occured with people like one of my sisters who it's ridiculous to think I'd be a physical coward against. The incidents were just me moving towards a bad event and me stopping in my tracks, literally in FEAR of "going there." Because of the consequences.
It's the old connection between the artist and the criminal. You can veer towards one extreme from the other. I can truly develop and be in strange ground or I can veer into kill everybody violent chaos. Because I have enough control I don't do that. But "some" events or incidents seem to have more meaning, or more potential for getting me into bondage to the General Law and it's specifically those events and incidents that I had these unique psychological and physical reactions just at the point of possible confrontation.
I havn't had one lately, which is maybe why I can see it now more objectively, and see what was maybe occuring in those events.
And the accusations of cowardice are just ridiculous usually anyway, because nobody for the record is actually challenging me. (They sense the kill everybody potential in me.) It's more of the typical taunting you get from the massed General Law. They feel safe because of their numbers against you. It's healthy for me because it kills vanity. In fact, like I said, before I began to see it as I've described it here I was just accepting of the fact that I seem to be a coward.
I think when you get into Man #4 ground you are an extreme in the human community. And you are in a more dangerous situation. Spiritually. So confrontations mean more for you. Because everybody - the General Law - is against you. Nobody really is pulling for you or on your side. So you become aware that if you make a mistake you can get yourself in a bad situation (like prison).
So in those flash moments when you show fear you are really showing fear of the potential disaster that can happen to you in that moment. I mean, I've been in states where I could just kill everybody. That is as extreme as being in the rare altitude of real development. So, because I don't want to kill everybody, each little confrontation has more potential for disaster for me, so I flinch and blanche (is blanche a word?) and hesitate, and sometimes literally freeze, physically.
That is higher will keeping me from a stupid temptation and stupid personal disaster in confrontation with the General Law. And I just have to swallow the fact that the witnesses see "cowardice." It IS to them, anyway. But to me it's me not wanting to kill everybody. It's me recognizing a dangerous situation (dangerous for me specifically in a spiritual sense) and backing away from it.
Does that sound like justification? Because I just started seeing it that way. I was just thinking I'd become a coward. But the pattern over time began to say something to me. It occured with people like one of my sisters who it's ridiculous to think I'd be a physical coward against. The incidents were just me moving towards a bad event and me stopping in my tracks, literally in FEAR of "going there." Because of the consequences.
It's the old connection between the artist and the criminal. You can veer towards one extreme from the other. I can truly develop and be in strange ground or I can veer into kill everybody violent chaos. Because I have enough control I don't do that. But "some" events or incidents seem to have more meaning, or more potential for getting me into bondage to the General Law and it's specifically those events and incidents that I had these unique psychological and physical reactions just at the point of possible confrontation.
I havn't had one lately, which is maybe why I can see it now more objectively, and see what was maybe occuring in those events.
And the accusations of cowardice are just ridiculous usually anyway, because nobody for the record is actually challenging me. (They sense the kill everybody potential in me.) It's more of the typical taunting you get from the massed General Law. They feel safe because of their numbers against you. It's healthy for me because it kills vanity. In fact, like I said, before I began to see it as I've described it here I was just accepting of the fact that I seem to be a coward.
New Books
Look at this: you have to build a new library. But since no more new books exist to be discovered, the new library looks like this:
1. Book of Internal-Considering
2. Book of Self-Remembering
3. Book of External-Considering
4. Book of Non-Identifying
5. Book of Observation of Features of False Personality
6. Book of Separation
7. Book of New Thinking
Each book can only be "read" by doing the book. The book exists, but "out there" in experience.
1. Book of Internal-Considering
2. Book of Self-Remembering
3. Book of External-Considering
4. Book of Non-Identifying
5. Book of Observation of Features of False Personality
6. Book of Separation
7. Book of New Thinking
Each book can only be "read" by doing the book. The book exists, but "out there" in experience.
4/11/07
40 Day Work Effort (3rd of '07)
The above depiction of a 3x5 card shows 16 hours worth of self-remembering effort accomplished. (Each x equals a 15 minute span of time; there are 64 x's.)
In an average day there will be 16 hours when a person is out and about (assuming 8 hours of sleep is the norm).
Each day of the 40 days of this effort I'll make up a card like this and put an x in the box for every time I'm able to be awake at a fifteen minute interval starting from the previous interval. 64 x's is the most I can mark in one day. I'll record the total number of x's marked for each day.
I keep moving the start date up, but I think today - the 16th - is the day, unless it's tomorrow.
April 16, 2007 - May 25, 2007
Day 1 -
4/5/07
John Owen, Biblical Theology - extracts
When men [shallow Christian scholars and church leaders] exercise their minds about spiritual matters while being themselves strangers to the Holy Spirit and His evangelical workings, the outcome is often a despising of, and hostility to, the Spirit of Christ in those to whom He has graciously bestowed His gifts in accordance with the New Testament promises. Surely some part of the philosophy that they have learned must make them understand that such evangelical talents as are well-pleasing to God must be manifested publicly, and will be seen in operation among the pious; but, even if they refrain themselves from mocking the Holy Spirit openly and directly in plain language, yet it is still their custom to exercise their impudent wits in criticism of those whose privileges they do not share. Very Suffenuses themselves, they are never more popular among profane mockers than when the mark of their elegant and witty attacks is the Spirit of God dwelling in the pious.
In external matters, where the study of Christian theology has some common ground with secular sciences, they [shallow Christian scholars and church leaders] are often fierce and fiery disputants; they are subtle investigators of theologico-philosophical propositions. They give appearance of being (and often in truth are) great gluttons for their books. And yet, when they must stand before the people and expound the mysteries of the gospel, they merely demonstrate their own ineffeciency and emptiness.
From page 610-11 of Owen's Biblical Theology.
3/31/07
John Owen, Biblical Theology - extracts
John Owen, Biblical Theology - extracts:
Speaking of natural theology and how knowledge of Jesus can only come from special, revealed revelation, here is an interesting passage where Owen quotes Cicero on the Sibylline oracle, or Sibylline Books:
Cicero, accusing a politician of using the Sibylline oracle for political purposes by claiming a real king needs to appear for the safety of the Roman state to be truly achieved puts it this way:
Extract from page 225 of Owen's Biblical Theology.
Speaking of natural theology and how knowledge of Jesus can only come from special, revealed revelation, here is an interesting passage where Owen quotes Cicero on the Sibylline oracle, or Sibylline Books:
Cicero, accusing a politician of using the Sibylline oracle for political purposes by claiming a real king needs to appear for the safety of the Roman state to be truly achieved puts it this way:
"There are certain verses of the Sibyl which they claim were composed in her sacred frenzy, and not so long ago it is believed that an interpreter of these verses plotted to pass some lies upon the Senate, to the effect that our leaders are but "de-facto" kings; but if we wish our state to remain in safety we must find one who is the king of kings. But if this is really in the Sibylline Books, to whom and to when can it apply?"Owen then goes on to remark that there was this vague folk belief among the Romans that a great Ruler, or king of kings was going to appear, and he quotes Seutonius (who called it "an old and constantly held belief") and Tacitus (who called it "a belief handed down from the oldest priestly books").
Extract from page 225 of Owen's Biblical Theology.
2/17/07
Notes from the Battlefield
I'm keeping up the same effort because I've been in such surreal events recently, and the events have called for real ability to do battle from a higher centers realm: real will.
If I stop now I could get in trouble.
If I stop the prayer now too I could be in trouble.
Part of the surreal events is me getting falsely accused to the police and interrogated by the police (in this case REALLY falsely accused). If I didn't have self-command during these "battles" I'd have really put myself into the hands of the world (turned over to authorities, imprisoned. It's all very biblical.)
I've had to not internally-consider (the tempations have been directly on my vanity and pride).
So I'm like a grail knight who has been in a higher state, then has been in a battle, then continues on. If I just stop with the higher state part the next battle will do me in. I have to stay on my horse.
It's all blatantly an attack in a Christian context too. I'm not in the camp of the devil, so they are persecuting me (a loaded word: "persecuting". I know that.) Yet they are losing. I'm no longer in what I call a "liquid" state. When I first started becoming a real Christian I dissolved and was like in a liquid state. Very easy to mess with me. Now I'm no longer like that but am something substantial with understanding and ability to act from higher will (God's will). I can still overplay my hand (that's a temptation and weakness, like "I won that round, ha ha" and then indulge in resentment over the "injustices" in the aftermath and things like that), so I need to stay shrewd and recognize the dangerous ground I'm on.
I have understanding of the forces at work. It's the battle of not only entering into, but developing within the Kingdom of Light.
If I stop now I could get in trouble.
If I stop the prayer now too I could be in trouble.
Part of the surreal events is me getting falsely accused to the police and interrogated by the police (in this case REALLY falsely accused). If I didn't have self-command during these "battles" I'd have really put myself into the hands of the world (turned over to authorities, imprisoned. It's all very biblical.)
I've had to not internally-consider (the tempations have been directly on my vanity and pride).
So I'm like a grail knight who has been in a higher state, then has been in a battle, then continues on. If I just stop with the higher state part the next battle will do me in. I have to stay on my horse.
It's all blatantly an attack in a Christian context too. I'm not in the camp of the devil, so they are persecuting me (a loaded word: "persecuting". I know that.) Yet they are losing. I'm no longer in what I call a "liquid" state. When I first started becoming a real Christian I dissolved and was like in a liquid state. Very easy to mess with me. Now I'm no longer like that but am something substantial with understanding and ability to act from higher will (God's will). I can still overplay my hand (that's a temptation and weakness, like "I won that round, ha ha" and then indulge in resentment over the "injustices" in the aftermath and things like that), so I need to stay shrewd and recognize the dangerous ground I'm on.
I have understanding of the forces at work. It's the battle of not only entering into, but developing within the Kingdom of Light.
40 Day Work Effort (2nd of '07)
FEB. 17, 2007 THROUGH MAR. 28, 2007 (GOD WILLING)
Day17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Finished
Straight, basic 3rd State of Consciousness effort and provoking limits effort (self-remembering, non-identifying, real will). Prayer as higher will volition too. And reading the Bible for understanding. Then thinking/understanding in the language of cosmoses along the way.
Some schedule self-remembering too. (Combined with the straight self-remembering - duration, depth, and frequency - effort.)
Basically, to put a number and daily aim on it: 1 hr. (Again 1 hr., because it seems practical, and each hour can be more or less serious regarding the effort.)
Day
Straight, basic 3rd State of Consciousness effort and provoking limits effort (self-remembering, non-identifying, real will). Prayer as higher will volition too. And reading the Bible for understanding. Then thinking/understanding in the language of cosmoses along the way.
Some schedule self-remembering too. (Combined with the straight self-remembering - duration, depth, and frequency - effort.)
Basically, to put a number and daily aim on it: 1 hr. (Again 1 hr., because it seems practical, and each hour can be more or less serious regarding the effort.)
2/8/07
Language of Cosmoses 3
[Read this numbered series in order if anyone is (because I'm referencing things from past posts in the series).]
It becomes clear, when contemplating cosmoses and finding examples, that the distinction between the Macrocosmos and a Microcosmos is of a different order and is central to a human being's experience with the subject.
Just to be able to be (to have the potential to be) a pattern (full pattern) of the Macrocosmos is something that is truly special; and a human being can be a full pattern of the Macrocosmos, i.e. a Microcosmos.
Having the full image of God is being a microcosmos patterned after the Macrocosmos.
We were created as that but fell and lost that full image; but it can be recovered.
This is being a cosmos that is contained in a different way from other cosmoses. Less reliant on other things (though still reliant on God as source of all energy and everything).
That verse from the Gospel of John (4:14) says it (from the post below).
This is a subject almost separate from seeing the world objectively. Different anyway. Seeing yourself not only as a cosmos - your body and so on - but seeing it as an actual microcosmos of the Macrocosmos. The image of God and also the Universe itself.
There are subjects in here like healing too. Seeing yourself as a cosmos introduces such subject matter like healing, or getting a full-cosmos sense of your body and being. The body has these abilities to stay in tune, or to get back into tune, and to heal itself, to some degree anyway. (To not get injured or ill to begin with is best, and is part of being above the law of accident and other things.)
But getting understanding of ourselves and of God is part of this connection of Macrocosmos and microcosmos. All the Work teaching of many 'I's and Real I, personality and essence and so on is describing us as cosmos, and the universe as macrocosmos, and so on.
I just wanted to point out how the Macrocosmos/microcosmos subject is of a different order than cosmoses in general.
It becomes clear, when contemplating cosmoses and finding examples, that the distinction between the Macrocosmos and a Microcosmos is of a different order and is central to a human being's experience with the subject.
Just to be able to be (to have the potential to be) a pattern (full pattern) of the Macrocosmos is something that is truly special; and a human being can be a full pattern of the Macrocosmos, i.e. a Microcosmos.
Having the full image of God is being a microcosmos patterned after the Macrocosmos.
We were created as that but fell and lost that full image; but it can be recovered.
This is being a cosmos that is contained in a different way from other cosmoses. Less reliant on other things (though still reliant on God as source of all energy and everything).
That verse from the Gospel of John (4:14) says it (from the post below).
This is a subject almost separate from seeing the world objectively. Different anyway. Seeing yourself not only as a cosmos - your body and so on - but seeing it as an actual microcosmos of the Macrocosmos. The image of God and also the Universe itself.
There are subjects in here like healing too. Seeing yourself as a cosmos introduces such subject matter like healing, or getting a full-cosmos sense of your body and being. The body has these abilities to stay in tune, or to get back into tune, and to heal itself, to some degree anyway. (To not get injured or ill to begin with is best, and is part of being above the law of accident and other things.)
But getting understanding of ourselves and of God is part of this connection of Macrocosmos and microcosmos. All the Work teaching of many 'I's and Real I, personality and essence and so on is describing us as cosmos, and the universe as macrocosmos, and so on.
I just wanted to point out how the Macrocosmos/microcosmos subject is of a different order than cosmoses in general.
Language of Cosmoses 2
[Read this numbered series in order if anyone is (because I'm referencing things from past posts in the series).]
Seeing speed of perception, or different speeds of reality (I don't know how to put it) in a scene or event or whatever is an element that brings deeper vision and understanding into things. Time. Past, present, future. Now. That girl and her remark. Not only does it reside in a cosmos that is represented by her life and experience and history and immediate physical surroundings and forces and so on, but it also resides in a cosmos, or cosmoses, of higher time (and lower time?), that means recurrence, perhaps, putting it practically, but I'm just saying. Musing.
You can probably forumulate things like: How best to enter a cosmos. Nothing too mysterious, just don't frighten the cosmos. Recognize you're a foreign element entering that cosmos. Recognize you're a guest, I suppose.
Or if not a guest (or whatever you are) play your role adroitly. You can if you understand your role and the cosmos you're entering and all that. If you see the whole and see yourself as a part in that whole, in perspective.
Alot of this we do anyway. It's just basic worldly understanding and tact. Still, there is more to be understood there with the language of cosmoses. If you push it.
Criminals get this kind of understanding of people and institutions. Like a criminal who "knows" the law and the police and correctional institutions and all that. They get a confidence. They know what can be done against them and what can't. In a tyranny they can't work the system like that (a tyranny like hell). (Where the laws are chaos.) Or a scam artist on the street who can look at a person and "size them up" and all that.
But there's much deeper levels of understanding when thinking in the language of cosmoses. More there. Vision and understanding.
Anyway, the language of cosmoses gives language to what we mostly intuit up to this point. When language it put to what has up to now been intuition (and similar things) it becomes objective understanding. Potentially. By degree.
Seeing speed of perception, or different speeds of reality (I don't know how to put it) in a scene or event or whatever is an element that brings deeper vision and understanding into things. Time. Past, present, future. Now. That girl and her remark. Not only does it reside in a cosmos that is represented by her life and experience and history and immediate physical surroundings and forces and so on, but it also resides in a cosmos, or cosmoses, of higher time (and lower time?), that means recurrence, perhaps, putting it practically, but I'm just saying. Musing.
You can probably forumulate things like: How best to enter a cosmos. Nothing too mysterious, just don't frighten the cosmos. Recognize you're a foreign element entering that cosmos. Recognize you're a guest, I suppose.
Or if not a guest (or whatever you are) play your role adroitly. You can if you understand your role and the cosmos you're entering and all that. If you see the whole and see yourself as a part in that whole, in perspective.
Alot of this we do anyway. It's just basic worldly understanding and tact. Still, there is more to be understood there with the language of cosmoses. If you push it.
Criminals get this kind of understanding of people and institutions. Like a criminal who "knows" the law and the police and correctional institutions and all that. They get a confidence. They know what can be done against them and what can't. In a tyranny they can't work the system like that (a tyranny like hell). (Where the laws are chaos.) Or a scam artist on the street who can look at a person and "size them up" and all that.
But there's much deeper levels of understanding when thinking in the language of cosmoses. More there. Vision and understanding.
Anyway, the language of cosmoses gives language to what we mostly intuit up to this point. When language it put to what has up to now been intuition (and similar things) it becomes objective understanding. Potentially. By degree.
Language of Cosmoses 1
Musings on cosmoses...
Driving down the street I was thinking about cosmoses and how they are contained things, of order and beauty (in their own way, or just beautiful in a universal way).
I looked at other cars and could see they are mechanical cosmoses. I looked at buildings I was passing and could see they are cosmoses. Both need an outside source of energy though. The cars need fuel, the buildings need electricity and gas and so on.
Also, a big institution like a hospital building or a government building is a cosmos. When you enter it as a visitor you are entering a cosmos. The people who work there are part of that cosmos. You are a foreign presence in that cosmos (and you feel it usually).
Human beings, physical bodies, are cosmoses. We need energy from outside us: food, air, impressions.
Impressions can be from the Absolute III or the Absolute II.
(We eat, breathe, and live in cosmoses too. The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan are cosmoses.)
The Bible, I pondered, speaks on this subject regarding energy source:
Objective understanding comes from seeing in the language of cosmoses. Acting from the language of cosmoses. Speaking and thinking from the language of cosmoses. It is big enough to contain everything, even things that don't immediately seem "cosmosish." It contain, for instance, all the ideas and things of the cosmological side of the Work (that word alone: "cosmological"). Ray of Creation, Law of 7, Law of 3, Scale (Hierarchy), Relativity, Speed, Centers.
Also, for instance, seeing different "orbits" in the world. These are part of seeing in cosmoses. Orbits of whatever. Economy, social things, forces, laws, whatever. You then see things as a "whole," which enables real understanding. Actually: objective undersanding. Seeing parts in relation to a whole.
So with the language of cosmoses you can see any scene or event and connect it with its whole and get objective understanding of it. Even something like a remark made by a girl. You see the "whole" that that remark and that girl resides in. Seeing objectively.
External-considering is part of this language of cosmoses.
Driving down the street I was thinking about cosmoses and how they are contained things, of order and beauty (in their own way, or just beautiful in a universal way).
I looked at other cars and could see they are mechanical cosmoses. I looked at buildings I was passing and could see they are cosmoses. Both need an outside source of energy though. The cars need fuel, the buildings need electricity and gas and so on.
Also, a big institution like a hospital building or a government building is a cosmos. When you enter it as a visitor you are entering a cosmos. The people who work there are part of that cosmos. You are a foreign presence in that cosmos (and you feel it usually).
Human beings, physical bodies, are cosmoses. We need energy from outside us: food, air, impressions.
Impressions can be from the Absolute III or the Absolute II.
(We eat, breathe, and live in cosmoses too. The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan are cosmoses.)
The Bible, I pondered, speaks on this subject regarding energy source:
John 4:14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.Here Jesus is talking about being a truly contained cosmos where the source of energy comes from within us.
Objective understanding comes from seeing in the language of cosmoses. Acting from the language of cosmoses. Speaking and thinking from the language of cosmoses. It is big enough to contain everything, even things that don't immediately seem "cosmosish." It contain, for instance, all the ideas and things of the cosmological side of the Work (that word alone: "cosmological"). Ray of Creation, Law of 7, Law of 3, Scale (Hierarchy), Relativity, Speed, Centers.
Also, for instance, seeing different "orbits" in the world. These are part of seeing in cosmoses. Orbits of whatever. Economy, social things, forces, laws, whatever. You then see things as a "whole," which enables real understanding. Actually: objective undersanding. Seeing parts in relation to a whole.
So with the language of cosmoses you can see any scene or event and connect it with its whole and get objective understanding of it. Even something like a remark made by a girl. You see the "whole" that that remark and that girl resides in. Seeing objectively.
External-considering is part of this language of cosmoses.
1/31/07
Report
This current (1st) 40-day effort has been a unique and rewarding one. I've been involved in events and around people that would normally be trying, but with the prayer - as innocent and naive and simple as that sounds - I've had glimpses of residing above things, in the higher time, higher speed, higher centers sense. Post-event(s) you can see it. Also internal-considering is arrows that can't reach me. I've been above it without trying to be above it.
1/24/07
Something that Resides Under the Radar
Something that resides under the radar is the building up of fear when you make efforts to be more awake in life. Fear not for life and limb, necessarily, but just a build-up of fear that probably is similar - but less terrorizing - to living in a police-state. "I'm not doing anything different than everybody else!" Or: slinking around like you're a criminal or guilty or less-than others.
Like others are (and act towards you like they are) more legitimate than you.
Paranoia, maybe. But fear is fear. It builds up. Sometimes you recognize it and stand straight and gaze out with an f-you attitude, throw it off your shoulders, but the thing about it is it creeps over you slowly.
Just identification with everything. People. Worrying about their opinions of you (internal-considering). All that.
The main point: there is an element of courage - spiritual courage - needed to be awake amidst the mechanical friction of the general law.
Spiritual courage, contentment, patience. Patience is needed when dealing with mechanical forces.
Like others are (and act towards you like they are) more legitimate than you.
Paranoia, maybe. But fear is fear. It builds up. Sometimes you recognize it and stand straight and gaze out with an f-you attitude, throw it off your shoulders, but the thing about it is it creeps over you slowly.
Just identification with everything. People. Worrying about their opinions of you (internal-considering). All that.
The main point: there is an element of courage - spiritual courage - needed to be awake amidst the mechanical friction of the general law.
Spiritual courage, contentment, patience. Patience is needed when dealing with mechanical forces.
1/20/07
A Further Note On a Previous Thought
I said it seems that people play common roles to circumscribe and safeguard against being insane. This means: essence is undeveloped, so personality needs to cover it, surround it, to protect it. It's a weakness because undeveloped essence is, well, being in a state of undevelopment. This is why it's comical to get angry at human beings. It's like getting angry at a machine. (Machine? Where have I heard that terminology before?)
Essence, when undeveloped, basically operates in the world like if you have a mental problem, or an assortment of them. Or if you are just like a puppy. Or, you know, whatever. Maybe something very negative and violent. Also, one has to add that evil spirits probably possess people who have no protective shell of personality. Or can. So there is that element in the population too. In Hades this is the chaos going on.
This is not an exact science. Of course.
Another thought: probably when you fall in love with a person, or are just fond of them, it may be little insights into their essence that you've come to see or connect with. Maybe. Something that distinguishes them apart from the machine that they are otherwise.
Essence, when undeveloped, basically operates in the world like if you have a mental problem, or an assortment of them. Or if you are just like a puppy. Or, you know, whatever. Maybe something very negative and violent. Also, one has to add that evil spirits probably possess people who have no protective shell of personality. Or can. So there is that element in the population too. In Hades this is the chaos going on.
This is not an exact science. Of course.
Another thought: probably when you fall in love with a person, or are just fond of them, it may be little insights into their essence that you've come to see or connect with. Maybe. Something that distinguishes them apart from the machine that they are otherwise.
1/16/07
Three Forced Thoughts
It seems like alot of lifestyles or common roles are lived as a way to circumscribe and safeguard against being insane. Or, fear of being insane. Not a crazy fear by any means, but it's based on weakness nevertheless. Of course 99% of life is also dictated by basic survival needs too.
Another thought: violence and bad things are so close around us that protection from them can only be explained by supernatural reasons.
A third thought to round this out: if we remember that life is really rather short even if you live to 90 then keeping your conversation (that biblical word for our total being and activity and everything) above, in the spirit, in the heavenlies is really the rule of the day. There.
Another thought: violence and bad things are so close around us that protection from them can only be explained by supernatural reasons.
A third thought to round this out: if we remember that life is really rather short even if you live to 90 then keeping your conversation (that biblical word for our total being and activity and everything) above, in the spirit, in the heavenlies is really the rule of the day. There.
1/14/07
Can't Repeat This Enough
I've been in and out of numerous events that are classic scenarios to explode higher energy within you. Classic resentment-triggering scenarios. And I've sailed through them (or over them), with the speed of reaction of being in higher time.
This is the result of prayer and asking for ability to act from real will (God's will) in those situations and events.
I can't repeat this enough.
At the time of the events I've had vague notions that I'm "in one" right now, but I say vague because I'm sceptical in real time, for all the usual reasons we get sceptical when we're self-consciously aware of things, or trying to be. But there are ways to see it after-the-fact. One way is the event itself provides fuel for resentment in imaginative retrospect. I mean, sitting around and recounting the event from memory. You see then often that it was a typical resentment-triggering event, because you're able to indulge it as such from memory. I mean you see the power in the event. Then you know you had unusual control during the real time of the event itself.
This is only due to prior request in prayer to have that control and wisdom and ability to act from God's will.
Can't repeat this enough.
This is the complete picture. Once you have this control, real will, the only thing you have to do is get use to nothing being negative. Days of heaven.
This is the result of prayer and asking for ability to act from real will (God's will) in those situations and events.
I can't repeat this enough.
At the time of the events I've had vague notions that I'm "in one" right now, but I say vague because I'm sceptical in real time, for all the usual reasons we get sceptical when we're self-consciously aware of things, or trying to be. But there are ways to see it after-the-fact. One way is the event itself provides fuel for resentment in imaginative retrospect. I mean, sitting around and recounting the event from memory. You see then often that it was a typical resentment-triggering event, because you're able to indulge it as such from memory. I mean you see the power in the event. Then you know you had unusual control during the real time of the event itself.
This is only due to prior request in prayer to have that control and wisdom and ability to act from God's will.
Can't repeat this enough.
This is the complete picture. Once you have this control, real will, the only thing you have to do is get use to nothing being negative. Days of heaven.
1/11/07
12
Bible AV 1611
Homer - Iliad & Odyssey
Wolfram von Eschenbach - Parzival
Shakespeare - Works
Carl von Clausewitz - On War
Smith - Wealth of Nations
Ouspensky - Fourth Way
Montesquieu - Spirit of Laws
Gibbon - Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
Plutarch - Lives
Machiavelli - Prince & Discourses
Homer - Iliad & Odyssey
Wolfram von Eschenbach - Parzival
Shakespeare - Works
Carl von Clausewitz - On War
Smith - Wealth of Nations
Ouspensky - Fourth Way
Montesquieu - Spirit of Laws
Gibbon - Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
Plutarch - Lives
Machiavelli - Prince & Discourses
A Thought Upon Looking at a String of Numbers
As I look at the days increase in my first 40 day effort of '07 (15 so far) the thought came to me - not to denigrate the day in day out effort - that we also make real progress in single, big efforts, or events where we are particularly awake and it goes into memory deeply. In other words, that "day" back "when" when you were particularly into self-remembering and found yourself sustaining it for many hours and you have a strong memory of that day and the things that happened regarding the effort. Or the event on that single day back when when you were able to see a feature of false personality in yourself in the moment and it etched it into your mind powerfully and became part of your "work history."
But I don't want what I've just written to denigrate the ditch-digging effort. The ditch-digging effort might be the foundation of the other types of jumps in evolution, so to speak.
But I don't want what I've just written to denigrate the ditch-digging effort. The ditch-digging effort might be the foundation of the other types of jumps in evolution, so to speak.
1/10/07
Another Some Note
We can seem so small with all this. "My brother said something to me at a gathering, but I didn't identify with it. I was in control." Meanwhile special forces operatives are battling terrorists in Somalia. (At least I know it's small events!) On the other hand, the special forces operative gets back home, then at a family gathering his brother says something, and he stabs him eighteen times. SEE? IT'S NOT SUCH A TRIVIAL THING, MANNNN!
Some Notes
I want to repeat that prayer is rather effective in this process of containing and transforming accumulated energy. I hesitate to say it was there all the time because I think you have to develop into not only a recognition and understanding of the fact of it itself, but in that developing involves everything associated with the big change of coming into the faith in a real way. Prayer and fasting: the "reins" of volition of real will. Effecting - doing - in higher time.
I can see an immediate stumblingblock is now thinking prayer is giving you control when you've actually not made real efforts to accumulate higher energy to begin with. Or been half-hearted in those efforts.
But that can be tested. You experience the energy in you even as you have new control over it. I mean, little - what I called - "micro bursts" of violence or just unusual heat in thought or speech or action. Nothing out-of-control, just enough to let you know you have real above normal levels of energy - higher energy - in you. I was in a typical family get-together recently (the kind where each of them has a flame-thrower and you're the only one with a target on you) and I was just floating from event to event. The flames went right through me. Half the time I didn't even know they were goading me. I was like Francis of Assisi. I was non-insultable. (OK, I don't know much about Francis of Assisi, but the image is of an innocent guy you couldn't insult if you tried.)
Note on the above: I don't want to give a false impression that my family members were in some wild, coordinated orgy of attack on me. They were actually very nice, in that "OK, everybody, shhhh, he's coming into the room again" way. But you know how the mechanical words can come out of the mouths. (I'm sure I'm doing similar things to them, in some way, hopefully not like in my past though - HOPEFULLY.)
I can see an immediate stumblingblock is now thinking prayer is giving you control when you've actually not made real efforts to accumulate higher energy to begin with. Or been half-hearted in those efforts.
But that can be tested. You experience the energy in you even as you have new control over it. I mean, little - what I called - "micro bursts" of violence or just unusual heat in thought or speech or action. Nothing out-of-control, just enough to let you know you have real above normal levels of energy - higher energy - in you. I was in a typical family get-together recently (the kind where each of them has a flame-thrower and you're the only one with a target on you) and I was just floating from event to event. The flames went right through me. Half the time I didn't even know they were goading me. I was like Francis of Assisi. I was non-insultable. (OK, I don't know much about Francis of Assisi, but the image is of an innocent guy you couldn't insult if you tried.)
Note on the above: I don't want to give a false impression that my family members were in some wild, coordinated orgy of attack on me. They were actually very nice, in that "OK, everybody, shhhh, he's coming into the room again" way. But you know how the mechanical words can come out of the mouths. (I'm sure I'm doing similar things to them, in some way, hopefully not like in my past though - HOPEFULLY.)
12/29/06
New threshold - another further note
DAVID FROST: You say you've been attacked by flying dragons before, but this time it was different. Just - may I ask - how was it different, other than your general success you describe?
ME: I had a flying horse this time. Before, when the flying dragons would attack me I didn't have a horse that could fly. Sometimes the horse I had would throw me, or just wouldn't maneuver the way I needed it to. I would still put up a fight, but the flying dragons would just mess with me. I could never defeat them, only struggle. I'd get burned by them. This time though I not only had a horse under my control but a horse that could fly. With a flying horse the dragons lost their main advantages over me. My flying horse was very fast too. So my sword - my words, my faith - could be more effective.
ME: I had a flying horse this time. Before, when the flying dragons would attack me I didn't have a horse that could fly. Sometimes the horse I had would throw me, or just wouldn't maneuver the way I needed it to. I would still put up a fight, but the flying dragons would just mess with me. I could never defeat them, only struggle. I'd get burned by them. This time though I not only had a horse under my control but a horse that could fly. With a flying horse the dragons lost their main advantages over me. My flying horse was very fast too. So my sword - my words, my faith - could be more effective.
New threshold - a further note
It sounds so stupid to use a clerk (or whatever they're called) in a store as an example of such a big thing, but there you go. I'd like to say I'm being attacked by flying dragons, and this time it was different, but . . . I can't say that. Maybe I can. Maybe symbolically there are flying dragons in mundane places, as part of mundane events. Darts of Satan? This mundane person sent a dart of Satan at me, and I fended it off deftly. You think, though, there are people being attacked in serious and dangerous and ferocious ways. So it seems comical. Still. Maybe they are being attacked to that degree because they've yet to escape such environments and I've already escaped them. There but for the grace of God go I. Knock on wood.
I don't want to take anything away from my main point in this post though. I truly feel a new level of control of this higher velocity, explosive energy of consciousness in me I accumulate. I really do. And it is from prayer. It is practically speaking from not operating, or struggling with it, from the position of self-will but having higher will. Real will. God's will. Me, yet me connected to the Absolute II will. God's will. Not just me alone in no man's land not connected to anything because I don't want to say I was still connected to the Absolute III, but maybe you are when you are still acting from self-will even when you are trying to do something of a higher nature. Doing it for the wrong motive maybe. Or no motive. In my prayers I intentionally say "to glorify you (God)". God's will to glorify God. It's still you and your will, but your will is God's will when you are connected to the Absolute II.
The deeper I go with this now the more I want to pray - the more I feel I must pray (for protection) - for inner command and wisdom and God's will and ability to be awake to it and act from it. Because: new level could mean harder tests. More danger even. I feel strong though.
I don't want to take anything away from my main point in this post though. I truly feel a new level of control of this higher velocity, explosive energy of consciousness in me I accumulate. I really do. And it is from prayer. It is practically speaking from not operating, or struggling with it, from the position of self-will but having higher will. Real will. God's will. Me, yet me connected to the Absolute II will. God's will. Not just me alone in no man's land not connected to anything because I don't want to say I was still connected to the Absolute III, but maybe you are when you are still acting from self-will even when you are trying to do something of a higher nature. Doing it for the wrong motive maybe. Or no motive. In my prayers I intentionally say "to glorify you (God)". God's will to glorify God. It's still you and your will, but your will is God's will when you are connected to the Absolute II.
The deeper I go with this now the more I want to pray - the more I feel I must pray (for protection) - for inner command and wisdom and God's will and ability to be awake to it and act from it. Because: new level could mean harder tests. More danger even. I feel strong though.
New threshold
What the ocean nymph has been doing these last few years with the theology and Christian focus is demonstrating the transition from the #4 Man level to the #5 Man level. Prayer and fasting are the reins of volition (the control) of higher emotional energy, or, higher energy in general.
You have to be a real Christian. Otherwise if you develop higher than Man #4 level you'll be evil like the Dali Lama, with dumb followers like Richard Gere.
Control of higher energy needs real will. Real will is God's will. This is a clear and plain statement. You need God's will to be able to control the levels of energy that higher centers work with. (To have command like a king of your inner being you need to recognize the command of the King above you.) Prayer is the connection. The reins. Reins are the means to control the horse. Fasting is something different, but it can be said that fasting creates a deeper, longer crucible of worship for prayer to fill. When fasting is necessary, and it surely is once a person begins to experience things only a #5 Man will encounter. But prayer is alot and works to control the emotional states (backlash) and difficult suprising events. If help is requested from God beforehand.
God wants you to know you can't do it without His will (and actually that is just a fact of how it all works). You also have to come into realization that you do it - you have this control - to glorify Him. You can accumulate energy in initial stages of learning all this, and go through the motions, the revolutions, of backlashes and events and you can even struggle in that and actually increase limits and develop level of being, and this is all the Work and necessary and is actually being in the #4 level...but: you can't get all the way; you can't get over the summit without God's will. Without God's help. Because you need real will, not self-will, to attain the level of higher centers. And real will is God's will.
The #5 Man level is characterized by control. Control of higher emotional energy. At the #4 Man level you can have use of higher energy, but it's not in your control. Everything is hit and miss and wild and often wildly out of control. But at the #5 level it's in your control. Only with real will - as opposed to self-will - can you have this control. And real will is from above. It is that connection to the Absolute II (to put it another way). Truly that connection. You have to want it. It's different. It's operating with God's will, as opposed to the more familiar operating with self-will. You can't say you want real will but sort of still think in terms of self-will. Self-will can only fail, but you have to learn this, over and over, before you see it. When you accumulate energy and you come to the same obstacles over and over and indulge the same negativity over and over you see that this is a problem. (You have to have really been doing this though. These are things you can only learn from experience, not reading this post.) The problem is solved by prayer. But prayer has to be real. Actually the problem is solved by having real will, but real will is God's will, and this is given by request in prayer. Knowing what you are asking for is a big part of it, but you've learned that by your previous efforts and failures. (Not that all #4 level work effort results in failures. It doesn't. It is what is supposed to happen. You DO increase level of being by degree in the #4 Man level. You just can't get to the summit and over the summit (the second conscious shock) without real will - God's will.)
All this Christian focus has demonstrated what is necessary for the transition from the #4 to the #5 level. Control of higher emotional energy is the #5 level. Control of higher intellectual energy is the #6. Making it permanent is the #7 crown level. The difference between the #5 and #6 levels is not as dramatic and radical as that between the #4 and #5. Once you attain the #5 level you have passed the major threshold where the #5,6,7 levels reside. The other major threshold is passing from the #1,2,3 level to the #4 level. Becoming a #4 Man is a radical threshold crossing. Becoming a #5 Man is a radical threshold crossing. But becoming a #6 Man is more like being a #1 Man and developing your #2 and #3 aspects. Not as radical a threshold crossing. More an effecting of a complete development at a general level. A filling out.
I'm as pumped up with accumulated higher energy as I've ever been in the past, and I have control of it as I've never had in the past. I know it's there because I've been doing the first conscious shock, first of all, for more days than the current work effort records, and because the energy shows itself in little micro bursts of heat and violence, violence of thought and mouth if nothing else. You know when it's in you. But none of that has snowballed to the least extent.
And there has been at least one "surprising, difficult event" sprung on me that I met in an unusually controlled way. A different 'me.' I can't describe it, but I recognize the type of event as a common trigger to set me off when I have accumulated energy in me. To give an idea of what I mean by control, there was no struggle. No self-conscious "I am maintaining control and composure here." None of that. There was a different person meeting the event in real time with a new wisdom (wisdom as also meaning action). My voice was different, and the words I used were different for me. They were "wise." I said: "Are you going to talk to me?" I was being ignored, blatantly. One of those typical event scenarios designed to get you to blow your lid. It was trivial (I was in a store scenario). I asked a simple question and was being ignored with a little bit of undisguised disdain. Trivial. But not when you're full of higher energy. So, I've never uttered such words before. They were totally disarming and the person had no defense. "Are you going to talk to me?" (You have to know this person, his common type, my history with him, believe it or not I actually have a history of run-ins with employees in stores.) But THAT moment, in THAT event there was NO blow up. And there was no internal resentment for that matter (I actually have enough control not to blow up externally at this point). There was no "I am struggling to remain calm and in control." There was just: some new, disarming words, delivered in a disarming way, accompanied by ... nothing happening. Which is good. I.e. no higher energy being wasted or used by lower centers in a negative way.
I specifically asked God for that. Days ago. And every day. For strength and inner command and wisdom for just such an event. For being able to be awake, or to have real will in just such an event.
This individual I'm talking about is a real button pusher. One of those employees who will set you up if you refuse to step into his traps. Like, for instance, he'll intentionally take a nice gesture you make towards him as if you are being impatient or something not so nice (if you know what I mean). But this is neither here nor there. I've exploded over even more trivial things. They just have to be difficult moments/events and suprising and to happen when you are full of accumulated energy.
I had my arms full of items in a grocery store (no cart for me!) and this guy was either opening up his register or closing it down, I couldn't tell, so I asked him. And he gave me the silent treatment. Something he always does. So I could have said: "Hey you fat, ugly motherfucker, are you open!!?" But I just delivered words that went straight into his brain that he had no defense against (because they were designed just for who he is and his type and all that): I said: "Are you going to talk to me?" Weird words coming out of my mouth. Weird words to say to a stranger/employee of a grocery store. Yet because he was engaged in an intimate drama with me based on a General Law script he knew there was a unique connection and he knew my words were not so strange in that respect. They were weird, but wise and effective.
The main point here is I have something new now. I have control of higher emotional energy. As long as I have the connection of prayer. Fasting will be new for me, when I find that I need it. Can't imagine what might cause a need for it. Maybe getting new functions. I'm thinking always in terms of being attacked by something, like a new level of attack by 80,000 devils with hellish machinery of war, but it could be for new functions or something like that. Something I need though.
You have to be a real Christian. Otherwise if you develop higher than Man #4 level you'll be evil like the Dali Lama, with dumb followers like Richard Gere.
Control of higher energy needs real will. Real will is God's will. This is a clear and plain statement. You need God's will to be able to control the levels of energy that higher centers work with. (To have command like a king of your inner being you need to recognize the command of the King above you.) Prayer is the connection. The reins. Reins are the means to control the horse. Fasting is something different, but it can be said that fasting creates a deeper, longer crucible of worship for prayer to fill. When fasting is necessary, and it surely is once a person begins to experience things only a #5 Man will encounter. But prayer is alot and works to control the emotional states (backlash) and difficult suprising events. If help is requested from God beforehand.
God wants you to know you can't do it without His will (and actually that is just a fact of how it all works). You also have to come into realization that you do it - you have this control - to glorify Him. You can accumulate energy in initial stages of learning all this, and go through the motions, the revolutions, of backlashes and events and you can even struggle in that and actually increase limits and develop level of being, and this is all the Work and necessary and is actually being in the #4 level...but: you can't get all the way; you can't get over the summit without God's will. Without God's help. Because you need real will, not self-will, to attain the level of higher centers. And real will is God's will.
The #5 Man level is characterized by control. Control of higher emotional energy. At the #4 Man level you can have use of higher energy, but it's not in your control. Everything is hit and miss and wild and often wildly out of control. But at the #5 level it's in your control. Only with real will - as opposed to self-will - can you have this control. And real will is from above. It is that connection to the Absolute II (to put it another way). Truly that connection. You have to want it. It's different. It's operating with God's will, as opposed to the more familiar operating with self-will. You can't say you want real will but sort of still think in terms of self-will. Self-will can only fail, but you have to learn this, over and over, before you see it. When you accumulate energy and you come to the same obstacles over and over and indulge the same negativity over and over you see that this is a problem. (You have to have really been doing this though. These are things you can only learn from experience, not reading this post.) The problem is solved by prayer. But prayer has to be real. Actually the problem is solved by having real will, but real will is God's will, and this is given by request in prayer. Knowing what you are asking for is a big part of it, but you've learned that by your previous efforts and failures. (Not that all #4 level work effort results in failures. It doesn't. It is what is supposed to happen. You DO increase level of being by degree in the #4 Man level. You just can't get to the summit and over the summit (the second conscious shock) without real will - God's will.)
All this Christian focus has demonstrated what is necessary for the transition from the #4 to the #5 level. Control of higher emotional energy is the #5 level. Control of higher intellectual energy is the #6. Making it permanent is the #7 crown level. The difference between the #5 and #6 levels is not as dramatic and radical as that between the #4 and #5. Once you attain the #5 level you have passed the major threshold where the #5,6,7 levels reside. The other major threshold is passing from the #1,2,3 level to the #4 level. Becoming a #4 Man is a radical threshold crossing. Becoming a #5 Man is a radical threshold crossing. But becoming a #6 Man is more like being a #1 Man and developing your #2 and #3 aspects. Not as radical a threshold crossing. More an effecting of a complete development at a general level. A filling out.
I'm as pumped up with accumulated higher energy as I've ever been in the past, and I have control of it as I've never had in the past. I know it's there because I've been doing the first conscious shock, first of all, for more days than the current work effort records, and because the energy shows itself in little micro bursts of heat and violence, violence of thought and mouth if nothing else. You know when it's in you. But none of that has snowballed to the least extent.
And there has been at least one "surprising, difficult event" sprung on me that I met in an unusually controlled way. A different 'me.' I can't describe it, but I recognize the type of event as a common trigger to set me off when I have accumulated energy in me. To give an idea of what I mean by control, there was no struggle. No self-conscious "I am maintaining control and composure here." None of that. There was a different person meeting the event in real time with a new wisdom (wisdom as also meaning action). My voice was different, and the words I used were different for me. They were "wise." I said: "Are you going to talk to me?" I was being ignored, blatantly. One of those typical event scenarios designed to get you to blow your lid. It was trivial (I was in a store scenario). I asked a simple question and was being ignored with a little bit of undisguised disdain. Trivial. But not when you're full of higher energy. So, I've never uttered such words before. They were totally disarming and the person had no defense. "Are you going to talk to me?" (You have to know this person, his common type, my history with him, believe it or not I actually have a history of run-ins with employees in stores.) But THAT moment, in THAT event there was NO blow up. And there was no internal resentment for that matter (I actually have enough control not to blow up externally at this point). There was no "I am struggling to remain calm and in control." There was just: some new, disarming words, delivered in a disarming way, accompanied by ... nothing happening. Which is good. I.e. no higher energy being wasted or used by lower centers in a negative way.
I specifically asked God for that. Days ago. And every day. For strength and inner command and wisdom for just such an event. For being able to be awake, or to have real will in just such an event.
This individual I'm talking about is a real button pusher. One of those employees who will set you up if you refuse to step into his traps. Like, for instance, he'll intentionally take a nice gesture you make towards him as if you are being impatient or something not so nice (if you know what I mean). But this is neither here nor there. I've exploded over even more trivial things. They just have to be difficult moments/events and suprising and to happen when you are full of accumulated energy.
I had my arms full of items in a grocery store (no cart for me!) and this guy was either opening up his register or closing it down, I couldn't tell, so I asked him. And he gave me the silent treatment. Something he always does. So I could have said: "Hey you fat, ugly motherfucker, are you open!!?" But I just delivered words that went straight into his brain that he had no defense against (because they were designed just for who he is and his type and all that): I said: "Are you going to talk to me?" Weird words coming out of my mouth. Weird words to say to a stranger/employee of a grocery store. Yet because he was engaged in an intimate drama with me based on a General Law script he knew there was a unique connection and he knew my words were not so strange in that respect. They were weird, but wise and effective.
The main point here is I have something new now. I have control of higher emotional energy. As long as I have the connection of prayer. Fasting will be new for me, when I find that I need it. Can't imagine what might cause a need for it. Maybe getting new functions. I'm thinking always in terms of being attacked by something, like a new level of attack by 80,000 devils with hellish machinery of war, but it could be for new functions or something like that. Something I need though.
12/27/06
40 Day Work Effort
DEC. 27, 2006 THROUGH FEB. 4, 2007 (GOD WILLING)
Day27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 - Finished
(x = done; o = negligent)
1. Each day 1 hr. of true self-remembering effort - minimum. (That means: in it, not just getting there, and not being there with no value for depth and effort of attention to stay there moment-to-moment. An hour is alot when you're setting a standard for truly being in the third state moment-to-moment.) x x x x x x x o x x x x x x x o o o x x x o x x x x x o x o x x o x x x x x o x
2. Each day hit 3 time-designations for schedule self-remembering effort. x x x x x x x o x o o x x x x o o o x o x o x o x x x o x o x x o x x x x x o x
3. Each day pray for help from God as contingency in connection with potential future backlash and event scenarios, and just pray in general. (Use fasting for something really big and seemingly undefeatable that may appear and not go away.) x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x o x x x x x o x o x x x o x o x x x x x x x x x x
Day
(x = done; o = negligent)
1. Each day 1 hr. of true self-remembering effort - minimum. (That means: in it, not just getting there, and not being there with no value for depth and effort of attention to stay there moment-to-moment. An hour is alot when you're setting a standard for truly being in the third state moment-to-moment.) x x x x x x x o x x x x x x x o o o x x x o x x x x x o x o x x o x x x x x o x
2. Each day hit 3 time-designations for schedule self-remembering effort. x x x x x x x o x o o x x x x o o o x o x o x o x x x o x o x x o x x x x x o x
3. Each day pray for help from God as contingency in connection with potential future backlash and event scenarios, and just pray in general. (Use fasting for something really big and seemingly undefeatable that may appear and not go away.) x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x o x x x x x o x o x x x o x o x x x x x x x x x x
12/26/06
Recurrence
You can begin to see over the edge of reality when you see that people around you are in recurrence. Mechanical life afterall is recurrence. When you see this you can see what isn't recurrence. That gives the view beyond 'reality.' Recurrence really is a central idea - or reality - for understanding, even though G. and O. played it down because they said it could only be an idea. But they betrayed their real thoughts on the matter by discoursing on it to such length. At least Ouspensky did. Anyway, it can be observed. Not immediately, but with higher emotion you can observe it. It explains so much as well. Not in some intellectual way, but in a reality way. This is why people are as they are. When you see the correspondence with biblical teaching you have a rather authoritative validation. But you can see it anyway. Recurrence contains all the theories and fancies and beliefs about what happens when you die. It contains annihilation and reincarnation and going to another place, better or worse place. Those are like fingers, and recurrence is like the hand the fingers are attached to. Recurrence is annihilation because when you are in mechanical recurrence it's like you are dead in your time. Recurrence is reincarnation because in a real sense you 'live again', though just not as Cleopatra but as who you are now, cycling back into your own time. Recurrence contains also going to another place at death because you 'can' escape the wheel of recurrence. You can always develop within it, by degree, which causes change in essence and hence what life you attract to yourself. But also recurrence is not in conflict with the biblical teaching of heaven and hell. Hell is still there waiting for the people who ultimately want to be there. But it's after the judgment at the Second Coming that that occurs. Prior to that people - unbelievers - recur. Believers die and go to be with God in heaven.
Recurrence explains the action of the General Law on truly developing individuals. When you begin to leave your circle of recurrence you are, in the spiritual realm, leaving the camp of darkness. The Kingdom of Satan. And everybody in that kingdom sees you leaving and attempts to stop you. But if you have the Spirit of Christ - the Holy Spirit - they can't stop you, but they can give you alot of friction. This happens truly in the spiritual realm and manifests in this physical life now by the action of what the Work calls the General Law. People unconsciously confronting you, attempting to steer you back into 'place.' Like attacking a rogue cell in a body. Either getting it back into it's 'proper' place or destroying it.
You can begin to see all your life in recurrence. If you have accumulated higher energy in you that you are able to use. But it's a key to seeing beyond the edge of 'reality.' When you truly see recurrence, and the mechanical flow of life around you then you can see what is not in recurrence, and that gives the vista...
Recurrence explains the action of the General Law on truly developing individuals. When you begin to leave your circle of recurrence you are, in the spiritual realm, leaving the camp of darkness. The Kingdom of Satan. And everybody in that kingdom sees you leaving and attempts to stop you. But if you have the Spirit of Christ - the Holy Spirit - they can't stop you, but they can give you alot of friction. This happens truly in the spiritual realm and manifests in this physical life now by the action of what the Work calls the General Law. People unconsciously confronting you, attempting to steer you back into 'place.' Like attacking a rogue cell in a body. Either getting it back into it's 'proper' place or destroying it.
You can begin to see all your life in recurrence. If you have accumulated higher energy in you that you are able to use. But it's a key to seeing beyond the edge of 'reality.' When you truly see recurrence, and the mechanical flow of life around you then you can see what is not in recurrence, and that gives the vista...
12/25/06
'Recurrence people'
You can see the anger in 'recurrence people' who disdain and resent any talk of not being in recurrence. They are, you have to remember too, in the kingdom of Satan, to which they give their allegiance by default. Their vanity, worldly pride, and self-will are fixed, for the most part, and they refuse to recognize anything else. You can see though their anger. They want you where they are. They want you to stay where they are. They also don't want their comfort and illusions disrupted. You can also see how they recognize when a person is truly either no longer in their realm or is truly in the process of leaving their realm. They grin at most Christians because most Christians are just shallow and tame within the Devil's camp, and the 'recurrence people' see this and see they are no threat.
General Law and 'recurrence people' are obviously synonymous, though of course the General Law contains 'recurrence people' and not the other way around.
Recurrence people get some righteous justification behind their demands and accusations in that they represent the outflow of the Ray of Creation. The procreate and be mechanical and violent and spill blood and procreate some more outflow of the Ray of Creation. Anybody going against that current, in a real way, is seen to be doing it on the foundation of what the 'recurrence people' have done for them. "We gave birth to you. We raised you. We worked for you so you could have civilization and technology and your books." Etc., etc.
Non-recurrence people can counter: "God did it all; and He's now called me back to Him." Then it gets down to the recurrence people's inherent willful rebellion against God. "OK, God did it, but screw God. I don't need God."
So don't let the 'recurrence people' control you. Be savvy regarding them, but don't be obsequious towards them. They can be overcome, but they can do you harm as well (or get you to do yourself harm). Be careful. You're really in their world (the devil's world) now, so be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove...
General Law and 'recurrence people' are obviously synonymous, though of course the General Law contains 'recurrence people' and not the other way around.
Recurrence people get some righteous justification behind their demands and accusations in that they represent the outflow of the Ray of Creation. The procreate and be mechanical and violent and spill blood and procreate some more outflow of the Ray of Creation. Anybody going against that current, in a real way, is seen to be doing it on the foundation of what the 'recurrence people' have done for them. "We gave birth to you. We raised you. We worked for you so you could have civilization and technology and your books." Etc., etc.
Non-recurrence people can counter: "God did it all; and He's now called me back to Him." Then it gets down to the recurrence people's inherent willful rebellion against God. "OK, God did it, but screw God. I don't need God."
So don't let the 'recurrence people' control you. Be savvy regarding them, but don't be obsequious towards them. They can be overcome, but they can do you harm as well (or get you to do yourself harm). Be careful. You're really in their world (the devil's world) now, so be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove...
Eschatology 3
Along these lines I always remember what Dee (from the old forums) said about Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac: (in so many words) "He had to really know it was God speaking to Him." I think actually she referenced Real I, as in Abraham had to have Real I to be able to follow that command. (Behind Real I is God.) I.e. he had to have an almost absolute development of faith.
So this is an example of this eschatological development, inward and upward, from Imaginary 'I' to Real I that puts you into contact with God while in the flesh, and this is how you truly know, or can know, that there is something there to be going to at death. (Even human beings who will merely recur, I think this can be said, intuitively and instinctively 'know' that when they die they will continue living in 'some way.' They don't have to know about recurrence in their time, but they still have the vague assurance that death is not annihilation. Otherwise people would act very differently in many ways obviously... It's more difficult to 'know' you will truly go to where God has many mansions and be glorified, yet this is what separates people who are really going there (I stand by that, but only as standard from the human end, and not as anything that limits God or what the Bible says)...
So this is an example of this eschatological development, inward and upward, from Imaginary 'I' to Real I that puts you into contact with God while in the flesh, and this is how you truly know, or can know, that there is something there to be going to at death. (Even human beings who will merely recur, I think this can be said, intuitively and instinctively 'know' that when they die they will continue living in 'some way.' They don't have to know about recurrence in their time, but they still have the vague assurance that death is not annihilation. Otherwise people would act very differently in many ways obviously... It's more difficult to 'know' you will truly go to where God has many mansions and be glorified, yet this is what separates people who are really going there (I stand by that, but only as standard from the human end, and not as anything that limits God or what the Bible says)...
Eschatology 2
So how do you know you are going to be with God in heaven at physical death? By having been with God in heaven now while still in the flesh. By striving for attaining to the realization of Real I within you. By valuing the ascent from Imaginary 'I' to Real I. By first realizing Observing I (which emerges out of developed Magnetic Center, which is something you had to value developing, even as you didn't know it was happening, but you valued the process, the higher influences, the learning of new activities, and you didn't get defeated by the separation from the world it causes). Then by degree, via self-remembering and non-identifying, moving through higher dimensions of time inward and upward, through the chaos of lower centers and through the friction brought to you by having higher energy in you. And seeing that alongside this you develop a high valuation for the actual Word of God. Before you were in contact with God's General Revelation, the Book of Nature and all higher B Influences that have some degree of God's influence in them. Then you make contact with God's Special Revelation which is His actual Word, the Old and New Testaments. It challenges your level of being, but you stay with it. Through all the mocking and tempting of the world and your own inner Old Man - vanity, worldly pride, rebellious self-will - you maintain a belief in what is real and true and stand by it and stand on it as your foundation. Even when the world thinks you're a fool, you know better and act on it. So you have these experiences of individual eschatological acts. Of vertical - now - emerging from linear, horizontal time upward towards God within you. Conscious shocks. This is evidence you are truly going somewhere at physical death other than recurrence in the same time.
Eschatology
If you are really going somewhere at death, and not just into another 'round' of recurrence, you should know. You should know because individual eschatology starts now, and puts you in contact with God now. Vertical realization of Real I, Jesus in you, you in Jesus. Movement in the 5th and 6th dimensions of time, inward and upward, effected by the two conscious shocks. What we value becomes manifest. Most of us want to continue where we are. When heaven and glorification come off our tongue it is just talk. Maybe self-consciously shallow talk, maybe self-deceived (or deluded) shallow talk, but merely talk. Usually, though, when a person becomes one who truly values escape from recurrence to what is higher, it should be admitted, it is because at that point they have no choice. They got there by what they value, but they stay there because of the necessity of being in-between something real, which is forwards, and something that is death-failure, which is behind.
Influence
Who am I kidding? I'm a Work Christian. Can't start a movement. We Work Christians though, us alone individuals, can effect many, in our time and through time, by our efforts to awaken. Conscious influence is conscious influence, when it's real. If it's real it's real. One Work Christian can effect many people in direct contact with us and through time. Even hundreds and thousands. Maybe more. It's an incentive in itself.
That old 'third force' to help along effort which is knowing we aren't just working for ourselves. When you awaken it's like leaven in the time universe of your family and anybody else in contact with you and then everybody else in contact with them even going up through time into the realms of people no longer 'alive' (speaking in terms of recurrence). The leaven of the Pharisees is not good, but the leaven of conscious influence is good. And you don't know. You may be able to effect literally thousands or more. I mean, this is a kind of evangelization. I notice with Work what seems cut off by not being in the usual church mode is made available in higher ways...
That old 'third force' to help along effort which is knowing we aren't just working for ourselves. When you awaken it's like leaven in the time universe of your family and anybody else in contact with you and then everybody else in contact with them even going up through time into the realms of people no longer 'alive' (speaking in terms of recurrence). The leaven of the Pharisees is not good, but the leaven of conscious influence is good. And you don't know. You may be able to effect literally thousands or more. I mean, this is a kind of evangelization. I notice with Work what seems cut off by not being in the usual church mode is made available in higher ways...
12/24/06
Yes
The nurse couldn't stop praising me. I'd written a note on a small piece of paper of all the symptoms the man had who I'd brought in. Six different symptoms. "This is so useful to us. It's such a good thing to do. Because we have so many things going on we can forget, but writing it down like this is really a very good thing to do." How do you do. I'm a genius.
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