
In Dan Sutera’s article on John Wren-Lewis, a very important point is brought up, that of forgetting. This problem of forgetting gets little mention is most esoteric circles. Wren-Lewis tells us of two forms that this forgetting of ourselves can take. The first he calls a “slipout” and is caused by focusing the attention on and through the mind. Usually this does not lead to a complete forgetting, but occasionally one forgets “eternity” and the slipout occurs. The return occurs when one remembers the “Dazzling Dark” and returns to the “correct “seeing, or eternity consciousness. This forgetting is relatively minor, as long as the attention, or value, placed on the mind is minimal. The second forgetting, that he refers to as “screening”, is much more severe in that it is a complete loss of the Dazzling Dark, his own dark night of the soul. This has occurred rarely and comes from intense stress. Let’s take a look at these two types of forgetting and see how they occur in daily life.
G.I. Gurdjieef remarked that we need tools to remind us of ourselves, he called these ‘alarm clocks’. Little mental
mechanisms we can put into play to remind us of our aim to ‘remember ourselves’ or to reconnect to the Dazzling Dark. These alarm clocks are necessarily of a personal nature, and serve to pull us back from the outward mind, reminding us to ‘go within’ once more. Sooner or later these alarms will lose their effectiveness by becoming habit patterns and will need to be changed. One of the best methods of remembering the need to staying awake is to take advantage of our fellow seekers. Nothing serves to remind us more of when we are slipping into the mechanical mind than a good shock from a friend or fellow group member. They may know us better than we know ourselves.
The more severe form of forgetting can be caused by becoming engrossed in the first until we have become so hypnotized by the problems and demands of the outward mind that we become wholly identified with its self-madness. Wren-Lewis refers to this madness as “some kind of inflation or hyperactivity of the psychological survival-system.” The ego/mind becomes wholly concerned with its own personal brand of self-survival and we no longer have any freedom of attention. We have lost the ability to go within and listen to the Dark. At this point, Grace and surrender may be our only hope. Again, our fellows can help us see the pattern of ego-infatuation and help us to relax and turn the inner head back towards its source.
One of the best alarm clocks we can have is to remind ourselves of the three lines of spiritual work, as taught by Gurdjieef/Ouspensky. These simple reminders can help us to remember that we are not alone in our struggle, that there is help to break the spell of the outer-directed mind.
–
Bob Fergeson
Wisdom of Tess Hughes, a wonderful lass from Galway, Ireland:
Conscious.tv Interview by Renate McNay
Visit Tess’s website at www.tesshughes.com
An upcoming documentary film release from Poetry in Motion Films, coming in late 2012
Art Ticknor and I were interviewed by conscious.tv this month in London. The staff there, Renate, Ian, and Eleanora, were awesome, great people with genuine interest:
Zen Leadership: The Toughest Best Business Decision I Ever Made
by August Turak
He cared deeply, lived carelessly, and couldn’t care less, and he died in the same obscurity into which he was born.Yet he remains the greatest leader and most remarkable man I have ever met. Everything that is best in me I owe largely to him.
For more information on Richard Rose go to : www.tatfoundation.org
” The Child and the Presence are the same one Presence and It is right here where we are, transcending this world’s time and space.” – Willam Samuel
Samuel was a man who learned his lessons through fire and suffering, and later put them to the test in everyday life, and found them true. He speaks directly to the Heart of the listener in a forceful and simple manner, leading them to recognize that their own intuition is the surest path to the Inner Child.
Holocene by Bon Iver from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.
“The Child of Light and Love is the pathfinder, the guide, the wayshower up the mighty mountain in Kwangse Province. Science, religion and philosophy can take us a great distance, but the Child takes us to Dominion. It is absolutely essential that we actually get in touch with the eternal Child.” – William Samuel
For more on Samuel’s work, visit http://www.mysticmissal.org/william_samuel.htm
For ordering his books and tapes, visit http://www.williamsamuel.com/
Above the door to the ancient temple in Delphi were inscribed the words, “Know Thyself”. These words describe the process by which we separate from our false state of ignorance and rediscover true Being. But how do we initiate this process, this grand work of spiritual discovery? What tools should we choose to come to know this thing we call ‘ourselves’? If we are to engage in the pursuit of self-definition we will need to use the best tools available. To stalk our ‘self ‘, we will need something above or behind this personality to best observe with, something of a different order. Using the personality to observe the personality simply doesn’t work. It’s like trying to lift a plank while standing on it. This self we wish to come to know is a constantly changing, moving target, a veritable chain of reactions and patterns, seldom still, but always within our sight. To observe it we will need something calm and constant. Something that looks but doesn’t react; a seeing that listens.
Coming to know ourselves eventually crushes the ego, in that we find we are not what we imagined ourselves to be. We begin to see that the person we think we are is purely mechanical, a robot. Honesty and courage will be needed if we are to accept what we see, and perseverance when we find our task difficult and wish to retreat back into imagination. This process of dis-identifying leads to ego-death, as we separate from our pattern. The simple act of clearly seeing the person we were for what it truly is, is enough to bring about its death. We find we have become that which witnesses experience, where before we were experience, creating more and more experiences in an endless mechanical pattern. We are no longer the wily animal we have been tracking, which becomes cleverer with every experience, but instead something free, eternal, and indescribable.
We have to have a contraction of our attention from the manifested world, to save our energy and create an aim and direction; simplify our life. But at some point the danger is this contraction could become the search in itself and an end in itself rather than just part of the means. The contraction has to be given up(actually, it’s removed) for a total relaxation, once the contraction has done its work. In other words, once we find that thinking and planning and doing in our practice have come to a dead end, then we have to give it up once we’ve hit the wall beyond which our mind cannot go, and allow the inner relaxation, so that we can receive.
First, we contract or withdraw our energy and attention to make the machine efficient and gain a vector and direction to get surely headed in the right way. Then, at some point there has to be complete inner relaxation, because the contraction of itself can’t give us the answer, the answer has to come from within through the relaxation. We get out of our own way. We must allow ourselves to receive, once we have improved the receiving mechanism: the intuition.