This came in the form of a comment, but I think it’s worth wider distribution.
So interesting, thank you all – the questions, Frank&Rita!
I’ve been thinking, even sometimes saying, that I feel like I am a precision tool for something that does not exist. So seeing precision tool mentioned in this context is useful perspective. About the arrow: the feathers of the arrow (tail) are the steering system, and there is the power/energy that is needed to propel the arrow. These come from the other side. So just paying attention to the me doing the aiming, the arrowhead and goal does not work, not in archery. Maybe also in life. It is just that the me doing (aiming) provides something for the surface attention to attach to. Anyone who has shot an arrow knows how everything, absolutely everything affects where the arrow ends up flying.
As these qestions are so fruitful, I have tried to come up with something I’d want to ask. What I have been chewing lately is what would be the best possible attitude for the surface attention/personality so that the deeper layers can have the most use of this life? The thing is, as soon as I manage to formulate the right kind of question, I start to get something like answer. For this it came to me that I was riding yesterday a horse that I was unfamiliar with. There are certain things I like to do to check what kind of horse I am with: stopping, moving, lots of circles. And I realized what I do is attempting to give the horse an experience of not knowing exactly what is coming. In a safe way in the arena, but still, something he cannot anticipate, because that way he will show what he is really like – also if he listens to me at all. And I got that this would be a good attitude for the surface attention. Take all in as an adventure, avoid things that let the hardening of routine take over. This will let the deeper layers come forth better. For good or for worse. This relates a bit to the arrow, too. The arrowhead just has to trust the propelling power and the steering feathers, and it will be getting the impact of whatever comes. Regardless of what the arrowhead wants. And the me that aims? If the me-department gets into a mood of gaah! the arrow went completely wrong – this just adds confusion.
I would really like to get more understanding concerning the deep, fairly incomprehensible currents flowing their course in the deeper layers. Or not just understanding – experience, that I can have something to build understainding on.
Ha, this keeps expanding: the intellect filling up sentences out of its own automatism is an occasion of routine taking over. Listening, being open is help. Falling into any automatism is not help. Artists who need lots of practice to master a technique, need to reconnet the newness again somehow. Being able to know when routine/automatism takes over and when you are acting from innocence is useful. Could a violinist practicing scales be all the way through in newness, innocence? He is looking to establish structures in brain that will provide automatic access to musical scales on violin. Brain is plastic.
Life will ride us through a lot of stop-go and circles to find out what there is in the concoction of this A(somenumber). And maybe, at some point, there may be a possibility to do something more complicated – grand in the social sphere. Or something grand in the deeper layers that never will register in any ape-tribe pecking order at all. Maybe, someone, somewhere, can say: this is an invisible step for mankind, but a giant step for the all-that is. I’d like to be that someone.
Hi Kristiina, and thanks. Agree with you.
And felt the book by Gary Lachman titled as ” Beyond The Robot”…. telling about Colin Wilson fitting nicely into what you to have told here.
As usual it is about the concepts by each individual as far as I am concerned(at least how I am looking at it right now).
My concepts are felt as changing each time to read Ritas` …. You made me
picking up the book ” Beyond The Robot ” from my book shelf.
And found something interresting in Chapter 11, titled as Psychics, Spirits, and Upside-Downness.
Quote:
” All mystical experience,” he saw(Wilson), “leaves us confronted by the same fundamental question: What are we doing here?”
Gurdjieff once told Ouspensky that the earth is in a very bad place in the universe. He compared it to outer Siberia, where everything is hard, life is grim, and mere day-to-day existence is extremely difficult.
Wilson himself says that in terms of our consciousness, it is as we lived on a planet whose gravity is so powerful that it takes an enormous effort merely to lift our limbs.
Page 259 in my book:
Wilson began to wonder. Mystical states (EXPERIENCES), seems to give us glimpse of a world of greater freedom, more meaning, and deeper insight.
Paranormal experiences seem to show that the limitations we usually accept are somehow unnecessary, The evidence of spirits seems to say that our life here on earth is only one form of life, and that in some way death is not the end of us.
If all this is true, then WHY(stressed in the book)do we find ourselves here, in outer Siberia, when it seems highly likey that we could be enjoying a much easier existence in some higher spiritual realm?
The answer that suggested itself is that “life” or “spirit” or whatever we`d
like to call the force at work here is “attempting to establish a bridgehead in matter.” The stakes, Wilson says, are higher than we think. We are, he says, on a “colonizing expedition,” and our job is to secure ground for further advancement.
The problem is that “after the years in these difficult surroundings” the explorers–we—have become so obsessed with simple survival that “they have forgotten why they came here.”
We have gone native, as it were, and lost sight of our objective. And some of us, the criminal types, are so defeated by the difficulties of living in this world that we resort to ruthless, brutal methods to achieve our aims.
The problem is that we have a bad memory, as Gurdjieff knew and as Wilson now saw. And the reason for this is the robot that Ouspensky and other inner voyagers return to when their brief excursions into mystical realms are over. The sheer weight of the robot produces the feeling of a “wooden world” (about Ouspensky).
And after a trip to the higher spheres, we all have to come back to ourselves: to “the boring old habits and worries and neuroses,” the “old sense of identity buit up from the reactions of other eople,” the dreary old HEAVINESS “(stressed in the book), that makes our consciousness feel like a “dead weight.”
We know that this state of mind is as reliable a source of insight as the headache that follows a night of heavy drinking(in the book). Every flash of non-robotic consciousness tells us this, from a spring morning breeze to the sexual orgasm(not my words). These glimpses tell us that the world is much more fascinating and interesting place than we think.
Okay, enough for now ….. and trying to “spiritualize” the ROBOT, the boring housework. One thing is for certain I am NOT “the born housewife.” And I`m trying to tell others believing in it….I `m wearing a False Mask. Actually, I`m trying to overcome any thoughts about “LACK”, the old habit/robot – thinking of “lacking” something.
LOL, Inger Lise
P.S. As “we, the Arcturians” once told me within a dream long ago: “We are looking at the world through your eyes.” A choir of voices.
Better to see the beauty in everything as much as possible.
Good luck with your beautiful horses. My long gone father lived upon a farm in Canada, on the prairie(outside Manitoba)with 60 horses back in the 1920-30s. The war sent him back to Norway. My one granddaughter having done the backhorse riding since a small child….Alice is now 12 years old and still enjoying it. Thank God for living at the countryside(smiles).
Hi there, thank you for your comment! Wilson, Ouspensky & Gurdjieff are all old friends on my bookshelf. The one thing that stricks to my eye in the piece you quote (which I otherwise very much agree with) is the “bridgehead in matter” as if matter were some enemy to conquer or something dead. Our notion of what is dead may not be quite accurate. My perspective goes something like this: in all cultures there have been recluses, hermits and holy men who have retreated into far-away places to concentrate on the spiritual aspects of life. But now opportunities for that are closing down. And people having normal lives get the task of living a life that makes spirit part of life. In a way, it is easy to be close to spirit in the Himalayan mountains. Hot chicks, fast cars and fancy drinks are easy to renounce when none of that is available. It gets different with normal modern western lifestyle. Opportunities for all sorts of aberrations are plentiful. Is this darkness and density? Or is it simply gauging the character who living this life? Riding the circles checking what kind of messages this life-form is willing to take in? Maybe the Arcturians would get a better view of the wonders of dish-washing and all the rest of the things that must be done, if the one having eyes is less grumbly and maybe even a bit receptive.