0137
ORGANIZED BELIEF SYSTEMS: THE UNIVERSAL OPIATE.
The heart yearns for a pathway, sure footing, a goal, direction, acceptance and denial. The mind craves for comfort from the company of others, a form, a suggestion, rules of conduct and a definition of Good and Evil. Instead, I speak of the call to dedicate the heart to an Entity that is formless, which neither accepts or rejects and offers nothing more than the opportunity to quake in terror before that which remains Inscrutable; the total sum of all the Unknowns. Stand alone and realize that the unknown inside yourself is only a small reflection of the Great Unknown before which you tremble.
The terror will increase till there is a willingness to dissolve into, and become a drop in the Sea of Unknowingness. The mind will scream and burn with its need for direction. The Essence, which is Instinct personified, will for the first time in your existence, go beyond Right and Wrong; Good and Evil; Life and Death. The Essential Self will explode the impasse of the dualities.
At that point, Man enters and becomes one with the Immortal; The waters that bear no name, close over his head, and he embraces Death in Life.
G.J.Barretto 04.13.06
Suggested reading: Rudolph Otto. also St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople.
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0136
. . . “if he were not there, everything would be exactly the same.” – Ivan Osokin.
Jean Paul Sartre and Medard Boss remind us that we create the context of the world we inhabit and that we alternate between admiring and despising our creations. Someone may see a beautiful tree, think of a tiresome lover, observe a unique example of architecture or fondly remember their childhood home. Situations, objects, events and people are each attired in the adjectives of our choice. All too often these descriptions are only temporary, and what was fascinating today easily becomes commonplace tomorrow. Both the eye and the ear see and hear selectively, bringing to mind the cinematic director who places limits on what he chooses his camera to ‘see’. The person we just spoke of, as well as our director, create a highly personal perspective. The director will define and redefine his scene. What he puts on film and what he leaves out, become his artistic choices. What the audience finally sees in the cinema are his final selections, and there is every possibility that he may eventually wish he had done the scene differently. Similarly, the person musing over their childhood home may see it in a different light and and decide that they are actually glad they were sent off to school. But no loss, by tomorrow there is a good chance that they’ll be missing their childhood home again. In this manner, on a moment to moment basis, we construct our world and how we interpret it. In actuality, the objects and situations are relatively constant and remain intrinsically devoid of our interpretations. Beauty and love exist in the eye of the beholder, so the Sistine Chapel does not depend on either you or I to make it what it is. Ivan Osokin comes to fully realize this and achieves the insight that brings about his liberation. Each of us is obliged to live with the contents of our own mind whether we like it or not.
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0135
Never Having Lived At All
One of the basic aims in our struggle toward becoming really alive is to diminish the authority of the false personalities and place them in the service of the essential person. As we are now, the Essence is very small and almost powerless, to a great extent covered by the false personality structures. These false personalities select our decisions and color our responses . Our real self is not given the opportunity to create or guide our life; instead we live as if we were puppets manipulated by the whims of our illusions; becoming projections of our personalities.
For most of us there have been those moments when we tasted a sense of overwhelming freedom; of being vitally awake. They are difficult to define in words, yet unforgettable and they become for us perceptions of treasure, glimpses of being truly alive. So clear, so dear and so rare.
Kubler-Ross writes that the vast majority of the people with whom she spends their last moments will say that they feel they have not really lived their lives. Not lived at all.
By carefully observing the extent to which false personality dominates our life, we realize the truth of this.
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0134
The Study Of The Soul
The most significant purpose of interior work has to do with the evolution of a soul. The word psychology itself stems from the Greek ‘psychos’ and ‘logos’ or the study of the soul.
In one context, the doctrines presented here are decidedly more geared toward interior evolution than toward the attainment of everyday goals or ‘stress reduction’. It remains true that when a person goes beyond the sphere of their daily round, there is often a sense of increased anxiety because the individual encounters issues that have usually been avoided for a long time.
For many, life without confrontation is a highly desired state. Yet it is essential to explore issues that we have been reluctant to examine; issues that may have been placed on a back burner and have managed to remain beyond the focus of our thoughts.
Peace and tranquility can become opiates of the soul if they are secured at the expense of an objective encounter with our deepest nature. Only by including the questions of death, myth and purpose of being, can a person take initiatory steps towards defining their essential self within a psychic framework.
Yet the thrust of the early stages of the system presented here deal with the thorough examination of everyday issues and especially the interpersonal exchanges that set the stage for so much waste of creative drive. The mismanagement of personal relationships remains one of the great thieves of our finer energies and the purpose of these objective explorations is to rebalance the management of life issues. As long as negativity and drama remain dominant, there is very little if anything that can be done to benefit the evolution of a soul. Briefly, and perhaps more to the point, the purpose of what is presented is to help the individual set aside the pernicious dramas that devour the finer energies.
Whereas the majority of endeavors of an interior nature aim to prepare the worker towards achieving a more cohesive life much along the same lines they have been already following, we seek to present an interior work which offers the possibility of a qualitatively different life for the purpose of helping people decide if they wish to follow the life of a contemplative; that is a type of clergy who lives ‘in life’, in everyday circumstances, yet need not belong to any particular sect or denomination.
These everyday people whom one could say are a parish unto themselves, are, in the East, referred to as ‘People of the Prayer’, individuals for whom issues consistent with their soul are the most important matters in their lives. They are not representatives of any particular faith, yet their lives are a living testament to the idea of the Holy.
We wish to offer a particular preparation that enables an individual to dedicate themselves to the cultivation of their inner perspectives while managing the affairs of daily life with skill and enjoyment.
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0133
Self Remembering
1. Where are you?
2. What did you come here to do ?
3. What’s your responsibility to the situation?
4. What part of you is present at this moment?
5. Find that part of yourself that wants to work.
6. Remember that you represent a school or tradition. Whoever knows that you are in Work uses your behavior as a mirror of that work.
7. Are you remembering that you have a higher Self or a true Self?
8. Are you remembering that there is something within you that reflects your creator?
9. As Carl Jung stated, are you aware that invited or uninvited God is always present?
10. Are you remembering that the mind you are using at this very moment is only one of several minds available to you?
11. Are you remembering your soul’s purpose in this life and if you aren’t yet aware of that purpose, are you remembering to hold that question at each moment?
12. Are you clearly in touch with the knowledge that this moment, this occasion, will never repeat?
13. Do you feel the all encompassing presence of death as a reality that applies to this day, to this moment; to this person whom you may never see again; to yourself?
14. Are you remembering that you have a debt to the Work to pay back for all the gifts that you have received? That you have work to do for yourself, for your teacher and for your school?
15. Are your remembering to be grateful for all you have?
16. Are you remembering what those who were in work sacrificed in order that the work would be passed on for you to have?
17. Are you remembering that you could lose your soul or never completely develop one?
18. Are you remembering that the work loves you and will be there for you as long as you are true to the work?
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0132
So very often close to tears, while realizing that there is no sadness or unhappiness involved. Once when in this state, I spoke of it with my mentor who informed that happiness often presents as a desire to cry when there is actually nothing to cry about.
Indeed, has happiness come to my door to remind me that I am part of a Rainbow, part of a promise; a minute but not forgotten part of a Covenant.
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0131
How wondrous the Chiaroscuro of that heart which is free enough to simultaneously embrace the profound and the whimsical, the present and the past, the acceptance and the remorse. That heart serves as an oasis for the polarizations that form the cadenza of the human existence. Such an instrument balances and contains. On a perpetual undulation it breaks and heals; breaks again and heals again. Never dormant, a tide embracing and rejecting, so constantly alive. So wondrously alive. El Ritmo de la Vida.
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0130
What a powerful moment when we observe, however briefly, a living creature who is reflecting the Heroic. We stand reminded of Man’s infinite possibilities. A call is heard from a somewhat removed level of consciousness, that reawakens the primal urge to embrace the Myth of Man and become truly Human. Our heart resounds with the cry, “I too want to live. Yes, I Want To Live”.
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0129
Ask yourself how you would behave if you had love in your heart towards that person or that situation. Then proceed to act that way, willfully and consciously. Do it from a sense of purpose; do it as an actor.
That is called ‘acting as if’.
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0128
We have become an answer oriented society; the Rumpelstiltskins. Change and freedom lie in doing and thinking differently. You become what you do and what you think. One must do what is appropriate for Being. Knowledge that leads to different action is what liberates. Without action there is only fantasy.
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0127
I have invented nothing. Yet, I’ve altered everything I touched.
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0126
In order to learn that which I believe leads to the liberation of an individual, three elements are essential and must be present.
The individual accepts that the present direction of their lives is incapable of providing their needs. The person must realize that their present position is the result of a belief system which must be changed before there is a real change of direction.
And, that which has to be altered is the core belief of what is good and bad; right and wrong; pleasant and unpleasant; desirable and undesirable.
A new broom, so to speak.
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0125
It’s a big mistake to act as if our friends and dear ones are our psychotherapists.
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0124
Life is difficult only in proportion to the amount of Will we have available to bring to bear to a given situation.
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0123
Remember that you are an Angel walking in Hell. Should you bump into any of those overheated residents, or arouse their disfavor, they are quite likely to attack. Exercise caution and diplomacy, bearing in mind that their aggressive and competitive natures are not only inherited but, in their opinion, are considered attractive and valuable personality traits. Except in rare cases, fraternization is not suggested.
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0122
Art is the medium through which something travels from the world of the invisible into the world of form; the metamorphosis of Idea into Beauty. A tear…. the look of Mona Lisa.
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0121
One can never be deeply and lastingly satisfied by anything external to ourselves; a person, a thing, a place. To achieve a lasting satisfaction we must become proficient in the art of being satisfied. We must gain mastery of this ability. It takes much practice.
On occasion, here and there, life and the laws of accident offer us conditions which are satisfactory but so impermanent; a lucky break; a sample; a taste.
If we don’t know how to create our own states of satisfaction, it seems a worthwhile effort to learn to do so.
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0120
It takes an act of will to balance a polarity. A conscious act; a change of attitude.
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0119
Bears of Consequence are generous, loving, kind and dedicated to profit.
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0118
Franz Kafka reminds us that because of impatience we were driven out of Eden and because of impatience we cannot return.
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0117
If you are in Hell it is your belief system that put you there and keeps you there. You will remain where you are until you adopt a new set of beliefs. Aspiring to become Liberated by adjusting a few attitudes, is much like supposing that one becomes Fashionable by merely purchasing a new pair of shoes.
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0116
Many, including myself, agree with that philosopher who proposes that because he thinks, therefore he is. There are also those who use this as a springboard to support their claim that because they exist they also deserve. To the latter I offer my Contempt, gratis of course, as befits their existential Parsimony. The extent of my generosity is sometimes as boundless as my Disdain.
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0115
My sole motivation is to find my Kinfolk and I present my thoughts to seek out those who somehow find them familiar. When these images first came to me, I felt no resistance; they were like long lost children whom I had long awaited. They made complete sense to me, as if they were a vestige from another Time, a distant memory; familiar fragments echoing from a remote past which I had never truly abandoned.
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0114
There it is again, that minor chord that sounds to the very wellsprings of my being. I feel so deeply grateful to those who came before me, those who encircled the Essential work as one cups the hand to preserve the flame of a match.
I direct my prayers to those who taught me to love. From them I learned that the capacity to love is in direct proportion to our level of Being.
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0113
My thoughts and my words I give gladly to those interested enough to examine them. I am grateful, and pray these folks receive some benefit in return for their kindness. Yet my heart remains sequestered in a garden Demesne. Cosa propria. We feed a dumb beast to assuage its hunger. Therein lies our kindness. To remove our hand in time, discloses our wisdom.
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0112
A person’s character is defined as an individual’s customary pattern of behavior. It has little to do with their Essential or real self. Character refers to the way people function, not to what they are.
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0111
Conscious love is not a sensation or a feeling. Instead, it’s a description of an attitude that is demonstrated by actions.
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0110
If there is something more magnificent in this world than Courage, I have yet to see it.
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0109
The power of darkness always strikes at what we hold most dear. Very often it wins the day causing us to believe it has conquered, especially when it has vanquished something or someone of great value. Yet that must serve to anchor our faith even more securely in the conviction that the Light must not surrender to Darkness.
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0108
Those who are working for Light are in the business of claiming and reclaiming souls. They must bear in mind that the best and most promising of these are the ones most avidly pursued by the Dark.
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0107
We must make great effort not to be consumed by despair. Our tribulation gives the Dark even more power than it already has and it is naive to underestimate its strength. The resolve of the Darkness is to crush those who have the capacity to achieve Light as well as those who are already in the service of it.
I am not certain but that it may seek to overpower the former in its avowed mission to bring loss of faith to the latter.
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0106
I can only pray that my defeats will make a truer Soldier of me. The Spirit of Gravity uses each misfortune to remind me of my insignificance and my nothingness. For this reminder I am truly grateful. A benevolent universe would be more than I could possibly bear.
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0105
I marvel at peoples’ infinite capacity for self delusion.
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0104
I beg you; please don’t slam the window on your way out.
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0103
When does the dying process begin? The moment we are born.
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0102
Each moment of despair creates the substance of further suffering. All species have the primary object of self perpetuation.
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0101
We are editors of our past, living in terms of acceptable and revised fictions upon which we base our current opinions and actions. Thus the present is molded by a ‘deceptio visus’ through which the beholder distorts reality and attempts to make it conform to selected fantasy.
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0100
Man is a creature whose mind is trapped in the orifice of his emotions.
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0099
Essence Work serves as a series of attitudes around which we conduct our lives. It provides exercises through which we study and implement these ideas. In this manner we observe first hand the effects of these efforts on the quality of our lives.
Essence Work is not about adding a few ideas to the existing repertoire for the purpose of learning how to lessen anxiety or increasing performance. Though these are often by-products of Essence Work, and very valuable as such, they are still life goals and life ambitions.
The aim of Essence Work is simply to help transform and illuminate the Being for psychic or spiritual evolution.
At no time should it be overlooked that Essence Work is a path; a form for psychic development. It is not simply a method for self mastery. Rather it bears many resemblances to forms of Buddhism, Islam and Esoteric Christianity.
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0098
There have been statements suggesting that after a sufficient amount of Essence Work, immortality can be achieved. I understand this to mean that in time one can create an interior substance capable of withstanding the trauma of death. In this manner one’s ideas or soul become an ethereal entity that can be accessed by others in the future.
The efforts and psychic knowledge that have been assembled during a life span need not necessarily dissolve.
Several years ago I came to the conclusion that there was no basis in my life or education for the understanding and transmission of materials which seemed to come to me in an extremely effortless manner. It occurred to me that somehow, I was in a certain sense ‘reading’ materials that had been compiled by others before me; by other thinkers from another time or psychic level.
I had for a long time stated that the things I often say are not of my own creation but that I have been given the capacity to perform as a spokesperson for the sake of putting into words things that some energy desires should be said.
I wish that these matters were clearer to me but at present they are still quite opaque. However I am convinced that there does exist the kind of psychic immortality that has been mentioned.
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0097
Essential psychology is based on an emotional sobriety. Webster gives several examples of sobriety and only one has to do with abstinence.
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0096
Do not confuse excitement with living, they are not the same. The salt is not the meat.
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0095
People are encouraged to explore their negative emotions, put them into non-inflammable language and discuss them in a proper setting.
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0094
A spiritual experience is an occasion in which we touch an extraordinary and magical part of ourselves. When a vibration reaches a certain intensity level.
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0093
A person thinks one way, speaks in another, and acts in still another because there exists no unifying structure in their makeup. We are seeing fragmented people and we are so used to it that we accept it as a norm. We allow this inconsistency in ourselves and in others. The fragmented, inconclusive individual has gained public acceptance and many, if not most people, are taken aback when they encounter someone who perhaps says “no”, sounds like “no”, looks like “no” and gives no reason to suppose that this “no” is open to persuasion. I refer to a sense of cohesion that is present in such an individual.
For me, only such a person inspires trust. Otherwise I conclude that the one with whom I am dealing is an unstable entity and that I may well come to regret anything I have to do with them.
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0092
People will live in bondage as long as they have desire. We fashion our chains from what we believe to be our most admirable qualities and relish each link as representative of our “True Self”. For a confirmed slave, the mention of freedom is as intolerable as the loss of desire.
Freedom only presents itself when there is nothing left to want.
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0091
Freud was always a closet mystic. It appears that he gave credence to the concept that a soul yearns to return to its place of origin. Perhaps this may have been at the root of his death wish theory.
I find that his only error was one of direction; man is dead now and from time to time entertains thoughts of returning to life.
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0090
A Gesture is an act of Will that alters the eternal configuration of those who knowingly or unknowingly become part of the Cast, playing parts in a Mystery that seems to have long awaited them. A presentation has been created for them, carefully utilizing their possibilities for a leap into a further realm of their evolution.
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0089
The Magician has chosen his actors, created the setting, invited his audience and composed the overture that raises the curtain which announces that the drama has begun.
Exactly when the opera was conceived is something we can never know, but it does exist because we sense that we are involved in something magical that we are incapable of understanding, another realm that seems to be just out of reach. The power of his Will is demonstrated in this production which is beyond the capacity of anyone to alter.
In an opus of inexorable motion, the Heavens and Stars have decreed the moment when linear time intersects with the spiral of Being. A Kairos time is conceived and for a moment, for those whose love allowed them to receive the finest energies he could bestow upon them, the doorway of Eternity opens, that they may step through to a higher level of Being.
They will never again be what they were before, for they have been altered for all Eternity. Such is the Gift of a Magician.
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0088
Ideas and teachings are tools. If you give one man a hammer he builds a house. Another uses the hammer to beat himself over the head.
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0087
Someday I’ll grow a mustache and go to the Congo!
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0086
Understandably, everyone wants to go to Heaven. But very few seem to have a desire to die!
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0085
Of the few photographs of G.I. Gurdjieff, one shows him sitting on a bench with an enigmatic expression of both body and countenance, perhaps tired and contemplative. Today in an hour of despair I was shocked to find myself in a similar position. We will never know what was on his mind when that shutter closed so many years ago. But for myself, today I was contemplating on the length of the journey and the rigors of the terrain. I heard Doubt and Fear call my name and was reminded that one needs good shoes and a strong heart for the walk through life.
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0084
When a plane approaches a landing field at an improper or dangerous angle, its pilot is warned to ‘ correct your attitude or you will crash’. Webster defines ‘attitude’ as “the position of an aircraft in relation to a given point of reference usually on ground level”.
What do the illiterates mean by ‘having an attitude’?
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0083
There is no greater honor than to fall in combat before that which we cannot conquer.
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0082
‘Humor is the mistress of sorrow’……….Ralph Waldo Emerson
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0081
I fight my Daemon, my attraction to Death, on a daily basis. My prose is in part, the result of that struggle. In addition, I also know my materials.
Somehow, chaos grudgingly surrenders to form.
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0080
I’m often pleased that people trust me enough and feel safe enough to tell me things that I really don’t want to hear.
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0079
Learn to invade yourself; take over your own mind.
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0078
Experiencing difficulty in doing something which should be done, demonstrates the irresponsible part of mind gaining predominance over our best interests.
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0077
Some situations are best dealt with by using a sense of distance or detachment and not engaging the emotional system. Other situations like observing something majestic in nature or art, or the enjoyment of a dear person or a pet, would be truly empty if the emotional component were missing.
So we speak of the judicious use of emotions…a time and place for everything.
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0076
The unconscious mind remains at a child level and doesn’t grasp the complicated ideas we like to believe we understand. If the message is a complex one, it goes to the ‘intellectual’ part of mind which is well equipped with enough pros and cons to turn anything into its own purposes.
This usually means keeping things as they are while adding to the stockpile of interesting information.
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0075
What utter lack of respect; to turn to God and say, ‘I don’t approve of the life You gave me. My choice would be superior to Yours.’
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0074
A person must learn to bear discomfort and sometimes a good amount of it. We have become comfort addicts who will almost immediately do something to avoid an emotional itch.
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0073
The liberated ones are taught how to avoid debilitating their efforts even though the demands and impositions of daily living are often in direct opposition to their Essential needs.
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0072
We’ve learned that at any moment when we don’t have an aim or a goal, we’re drifting. Having no conscious direction is sometimes a wonderful spot to be in; it’s called sleeping.
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0071
Like a good actor, one must know our ‘action’ at any given moment when we are not at rest.
A good director asks us what our objective is in any given scene. If the actor doesn’t clearly know his direction, then the scene is missing its focus and the actor is lost.
If for example you decide to open a window, then do so with a firm, conscious resolve. Let that be in your movement. If you chosen that action, remain aware of why you have chosen to do so.
That is the commitment of those who are called ‘Life Actors’
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0070
Each day search for signs of life’s benevolence. Perhaps write them down, for it seems all-too-human to overlook those things for which we can be thankful.
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0069
Do not rail against that Companion who has left the Ranks. He has been hypnotized and captured by The Dark. Will he return? Perhaps, but do not set your heart upon it. Instead recall that many have fallen and will fall in the Great Battle. It must be so, for the powers of Darkness are very strong. Yet, at some point, the Light will prevail but that day may not be for your eyes or mine.
Our reward is not the conquest of Gravity but the knowledge that our efforts were ceaseless and that we did not lose heart. For if we should lose heart, Gravity conquers and The Darkness will cover the Earth.
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0068
Marcel Proust. From ‘Maladies of Proust’ by Bernard Strauss
Holmes Pub. 1980 p. 149
‘…a kind of physical gentleness, of detachment from the realities of life that is so striking among those whom Death has already taken into its shadow.’
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0067
Why do we believe that we understand merely because we know the meaning of the words? It appears to me that understanding involves the capacity to do that which is being spoken of; to have a personal and emotional grasp of the experience.
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0066
It seems that some folks are just mental pack rats.
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0065
So much of the time what is called sensitivity is merely a disguise for plain self-centeredness and ego.
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0064
You don’t have to exchange your style for mine; you can simply add mine to yours and have more to choose from.
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0063
Morning snow covers the deer track. Now it only dwells in my memory.
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0062
We must remember to flex and use the spiritual aspect of ourselves, which like a muscle can atrophy from lack of exercise.
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0061
Music and art are meant to evoke the Gods; to create a doorway through which man may enter the mythic world.
Communication with Thomas Chapin
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0060
Negative emotions cannot be kept from surfacing. Our responsibility lies in what we do about them after they have risen into our awareness.
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0059
There are no doors to force open in order to leave Hell. You are given the capacity to create Hell states in order to realize fully that you alone are the Architect. You are always free to leave.
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0058
Rather than be concerned with getting out of negative states, the important thing is to stop creating them. Once in a negative state it is extremely difficult to extricate oneself. Again the focus is on self observation to understand that one is the creator of one’s mind states. The environment contributes but does not define.
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0057
There was no point in accusing her. When one loves a woman from our deepest part, there is no reason good enough to leave her.
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0056
Love is not a subjective emotion. It is a decision to act in a certain manner with a particular objective in mind; that of helping another person to achieve their inner capacities.
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0055
What your mind does is not your concern.
(This was taught at the training center in Rangoon.)
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0054
In the act of creativity we reflect the Will of the Creative Force and, through his work, the artist makes a personal connection with the Divine. All great art is an offering placed on the altar of the Eternal.
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0053
Fear is lost by placing little importance on things. The more important a thing is made, the greater the potential for fear of failure or loss.
Yet, some things are much more important than others.
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0052
Numerous times I have been asked if I suffer over the injustice I see in the world around me. Most often I say that I do not.
Yet upon further reflection, it seems more accurate to say that I do not feel any more sorrow than the amount which I am already so accustomed to living with, forgetting that what I have come to accept as baseline suffering may be a good deal more than most people can comfortably bear.
From the deepest part I agree with Buddha, that life is suffering and that with proper work on Self, one can possibly avoid rebirth.
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0051
Buddha based his teachings on the premise that through application of his doctrines one could get off the wheel of birth and rebirth. Similarly, a day spent in self remembrance shows how we turn from one false personality into the next. In this sense we witness our captivity on a ‘wheel’ of false personalities.
However, it’s very encouraging to realize that we can stop this wheel almost as soon as we’re willing to put in the effort required to do so.
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0050
There is only one great liberation; the freedom from attachment.
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0049
In Work, we must do ordinary things better than others do. Not worse.
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0048
Passion should be reserved for the creation of Art. When directed towards others, it becomes a debasement of that capacity, the waste of a fine energy which takes so much effort to acquire.
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0047
We are used to a world of people who can’t like us any better than they like themselves. Unfortunately, that is very little.
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0046
Power is to be seized from one who has it. It cannot be sold or given.
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0045
Whatever I am, for better or worse, I have paid for it in blood; at night and alone.
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0044
Wherever you are now, you are there because you’ve followed the principle of ‘I want’. This idea is emotionally based and is usually unreliable. Due to the human tendency toward self deception, what is pursued with the purpose of ‘feeling better’, is almost always self-defeating.
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0043
The words ‘problems’ and ‘troubles’ are best replaced by the idea of ‘adverse conditions’.
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0042
Webster, for those who prefer to speak to themselves in English, defines a ‘problem’ as a question presented for consideration.
When did ‘problems’ turn into emotional difficulties?
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0041
Do not simply read something until you understand it. Read it till you become it. That is, if your purpose is Transformation.
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0040
What should be found in a real school is wisdom and integrity. ‘Odd’ ideas usually serve to fascinate people’s minds so they may to continue to overlook the reality of their daily lives.
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0039
This happens to be a duplicate of #34. Sorry for the error; correction at a future date. Thank you D. for noticing.
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0038
If someone needs me I don’t want them; unless I am in the rescuing business.
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0037
Your responsibility is to examine. To explore an idea and find the value in it for you, is the basis of Work.
‘Falling in love’ with an idea because it has emotional appeal is as mechanical as rejecting an idea simply because it doesn’t seem attractive.
We are living monuments to our emotional thinking.
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0036
Ruminating the Past…sniffing the garbage cans of an unconscious existence.
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0035
We must learn to say ‘no’ to our cravings, or as Buddha suggested, begin to put out the fire.
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0034
Emotions cannot be reduced selectively. They are reduced together or increased together. Many people enter into a depression in order to blanket down the entire system when the intensity of their emotions become unbearable to them.
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0033
A senior citizen is a walking dollar sign wearing corrective shoes.
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0032
How very difficult to be honest when at any given moment each of our various personalities appears to speak for the totality of us. Indeed what is said or done at the moment is true; but only for a part of ourselves.
What seems to give us a sense of continuity is that we are almost always under the direction of our most dominant false personality.
We must remember that this part is not our Essential Self and is almost always burdened by layers of Fear and Illusion.
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0031
Sensing is a way of making conscious contact with the autonomic nervous system.
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0030
How careful we must be to not fall asleep or, as I am beginning to define it these days, avoid possession by the Spirit of Gravity. It can happen anywhere at any time. I’ve seen it often enough to still be shocked at the rapidity with which it occurs. Most often it seems that our friend has completely abandoned the value system they so strongly adhered to; hope, courage, and belief in the finer aspects of themselves.
Once this transformation has taken place, the person avows belief in their newly acquired position, tenaciously defends it and acts upon it with what appears to be a well founded conviction. I am often reminded of several low budget science fiction films of the nineteen fifties in which alien take-overs were intended to startle us all.
Yet we must not lose our Light through feelings of anger, loss and abandon. We may remind ourselves that our friend has fallen asleep and without a clear mind or good counsel has forgotten themselves. We must make effort to reclaim them. Whatever our Path is we need to protect it at all times; readings, fellow workers, prayer and an understanding that the guidance of the Light has an eternal quality. It seems to me that several weeks or even months are very short time for decisions regarding the Spirit.
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0029
Enter the Sacred, and that part of you which is Everyman, which kneels before the altar of Legion and Multiplicity, which yearns for the warmth of the Beast next to you, will shriek in despair. Behold the inscrutable desert surrounding a Prophet in his solitary peregrination towards Eternity.
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0028
If you say you need someone, or something, in order to be happy, then you are telling your Essential self that it is not enough to satisfy you. This is what your parents did when they said that you should love them. They should have taught you to love yourself. Do not abandon yourself.
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0027
The moment of death is like the sound of a door closing behind someone who leaves a room. When the door shuts, they have already left. So with dying; the act itself is a terminal gesture. The one who died passed on a while ago and perhaps we failed to notice the delicate process. We are jarred by the sound of the latch.
Had we been more cognizant we might have noticed the increasing sense of distance, the resolution to accept the finality of each moment, the gaze devoid of judgment, the collusion with the inevitable.
We may have shared in a longer farewell.
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0026
At any given moment your thoughts are leading you towards heaven or towards hell. There is no standing still. The only possible neutrality is to stop the identification with the thought producing mechanism and merely observe the thoughts as they parade across the screen of the mind.
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0025
According to an Eastern philosophy, a person will continue to suffer until they relinquish their emotional demands. Yet, many will claim that this does not apply to them because they do not believe they are suffering. At one level they are quite correct in their assumption, depending upon the criteria used to define suffering. Buddha considered anxiety, greed, jealousy, fear, confusion, anger and body discomfort as forms of suffering.
It is this latter criteria that I refer to when I say that man will suffer until he gives up expecting, demanding and being emotionally directed. And how does one learn to live free of emotional domination? There are several paths to this freedom and they all share a common beginning; a burning desire to do so.
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0024
If you believe that you can cause change in another, then you imply that someone else can cause change in you. The danger here is to wait for that certain person who will bring about the change you desire.
The truth is that you cannot change anyone who doesn’t strongly desire the change you suggest, and that no one can cause a person to change if that person is opposed to it.
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0023
We have come to accept tragedy as reality. This is yet another illusion.
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0022
Telling someone ‘how it is’, or our version of ‘the truth’, seldom helps anyone. One of the worst things about ‘the truth’, is that it is almost always so very subjective.
As long as there are historians, there will always be yet another version of the Fall of Rome.
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0021
When I asked for the help of Christ, a voice within said to me, ‘When you see the face of Christ in everything you set your eyes on, you will have reached what your heart desires’.
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0020
Hermetic tradition reminds us that truth and lie are polarities of the same nature and are on a continuum. There is an element of fiction in truth and a grain of truth in each lie. Where does one begin and the other end?
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0019
Accept that all is partly true and partly false. This concept alone is capable of altering our lives.
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0018
Few will comprehend the strength and clarity that comes upon those who have taken a Sacred Vow from the depths of their Being. I offer that they are never the same again, and I believe that they have entered a select Brotherhood in which Silence and Solitude have enveloped their hearts. Though they walk amongst us appearing quite ordinary, we are somehow aware that they are not. When we look in their eyes we hear a faint chord and a voice within almost wishes that they had taken us with them. But before we allow these thoughts to disturb our slumber, we gratefully turn to the next task at hand.
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0017
12/5/91
W-I-N is the way we have learned to spell God. As a society we are bred for competition; ill prepared to function in a manner where the primary purpose would focus in contributing to the welfare of the community.
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0016
What is done for you, allow. What you are told to do, do it. You will get more for yourself than you can dream of.
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0015
With what fervor we ask to be sent someone who will love us as we wish to be loved. Yet Essence work reminds us that our real need is to develop the capacity to love another person deeply and profoundly. It asks us to pray that one day we may find someone whom we will love, whether they love us or not.
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0014
An emotion can’t be properly worked on while we are in the midst of it. At that point we are identified with it. After the emotion has subsided, with the perspective of distance, we can work on the situation in an objective manner.
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0013
To refrain from habitual and mechanical activities that in most cases we have been meaning to curtail anyway.
In a broad sense, work on Will asks us to stop acting mindlessly and in opposition to the best interests of ourselves and others. This can be achieved by gaining mastery over our thoughts and actions.
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0012
The moments of my life are inscriptions beneath her photograph.
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0011
People often suppose that work on Will implies that they might be asked to succumb to the will of another or be requested to do something that goes against their better judgment.
On the contrary, developing Will usually involves making efforts to oppose the demands of our false personalities or our self-seeking egos.
Mostly, the practice is of Three: every thought and action contains elements of both positive and negative.
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0010
The false personalities (as if there were another kind), or the false self, will use any possible excuse to retain their supremacy over the individual. One of the ploys most often used finds the student expressing that their ‘difficulty’ or their resistance is that they find a problem in putting into practice what they cannot ‘understand’. To them it seems a logical reason to not enter into or continue a project.
Being as crafty as most false personalities can be, the statement made by either Mr. Ouspensky or Mr. Gurdjieff claiming that things should be ‘understood’ before they are embarked upon, arises again and again as a perennial monument to avoidance. Waiting to understand can take forever.
Yet, that ideology must be more closely examined. Where is the ‘discerning I’ that is capable of a higher level understanding? Does this ‘waiting for understanding’ serve the function of not doing something that a teacher has strong reason to believe should be done? The student may be of the opinion that they have all the time in the world, but does the school have the time and is not time one of the most powerful opponents? At a more basic level, what about the staggering amount of items that the student accepts as unexamined truths?
People who wish to do Work are advised to either have faith in their teacher, follow directives and put into place the little that is expected from them, or find teachers whom they trust.
People should also carefully examine why they believe what they do believe. At the same time they can examine the meaning of Faith; because without having it in one’s teacher, there is absolutely no point in going further. And what does it mean, in reality, to understand? Worse yet, what part of the personality is doing the ‘understanding’?
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0009
The Unremitting Remembrance of death is a powerful trainer.
From ‘Philokalia’ “on Watchfulness and Holiness” #95 (p 178)
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0008
I fear no evil for Thou art with me.
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0007
Some kind of healing goes on here; so if you just listen, something good has to happen.
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0006
The capacity to appreciate, to view life from a perspective of gratitude, is an acquired taste. It takes practice and effort.
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0005
Material gains are the by-products of life. When they are accepted as the purpose of life then it appears to me that the cart has been set before the horse.
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0004
For me, the phrase ‘temporal world’ has a truer ring than ‘material world’.
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0003
She took me half of the way. For the first time in my life I saw that there was something wrong with me; that I needed fixing.
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0002
Essence is the positive aspect of the unconscious.
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0001
I have a fascination for matadors. They are most often creatures who no longer believe in their immortality. Facing death on a weekly basis, they are never far from the realization that life is a series of hours that are measured and finite.
The majority of us deny the proximity of the final closure, somehow believing it an event dwelling in a future so far removed as to be almost non-existent. A moment more probably intended for others than for ourselves.
Even those who have embraced a terminal illness and survived , most often place it aside as an infliction which dissolves into the background of memory.
Yet, for the matador and those of similar callings, it is always a few hours before Sunday; the confrontation with oblivion is an ongoing dance, offering no clue as to when the music will stop.
And what occurs when the myth of permanence departs? I believe we are invited into a state of delicacy and tolerance; a condition in which we may become more aware of the poignant unfolding of each day. This may lead to compassion, for we are then sensitively attuned to the minor chord that is heard softly when the present withdraws into the past.
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© 2007 GIL BARRETTO