Time is of the essence. Humanity is at a crossroads -- actually, many crossroads. This isn't just high-falutin' talk. We face a convergence of crises (turning points), cultural and ecological, made worse by the corrupt, self-serving power structures of persons in government, corporations, in private life and in multi-national organizations.
The Global Cooperative Forum was declared and is described by the world-friend, Adi Da (in the books, Not-two IS Peace and Prior Unity).
He outlined The Global Cooperative Forum as a decentralized "clearing house" or nexus of communication among persons exercising initiative to blunt the influence of, and to remove control from, the dangerous, counter-productive, effectively anti-civilization elements of humanity, so that humanity might navigate our world-civilization from the defunct, factionalistic and fractured order of the twentieth century (and earlier) to cooperative world-patterns of benign relationships, in a natural way.
The strategy he outlined is intelligent non-cooperation with the status quo (i.e., "putting our foot down"), on one hand, and creative, cooperative action, on the other -- to avert the worst consequences of the burgeoning crises that involve us all and to redirect humanity in a benign direction.
He specified the internet as the medium of communication among able individuals exercising focused initiative by which a grass-roots movement of everybody-all-at-once can coordinate together to wrest power from those who are placing us all in danger.
Time is of the essence. This facebook group is part of a network intended to serve the mission of The Global Cooperative Forum.
"I" is the imagined -> remembered "owner" of memory.
"I" is entrenched by the memories of self, body and world.
Entrenchment of memory obscures tacit intuition of the formless ground of being.
Entrenchment of memory is like an iceberg with most of its mass submerged below attention's reach.
Attention is memory, located.
As attention's reach reveals what is obscured by memory's unconsciousness, the binding force of memory dissolves and the formless ground of being "emerges" or "surfaces" to intuition as the ground of being "prior to" conditionality: "free-standing", free-"floating", not created or held in place.
That tacit, formless intuition prior to conditionality witnesses the condensations of mind and modifications of consciousness from subtle to dense, from formlessness into form, as in the story of the manifestation of The Dawn Horse.
Seeking, or the urge "to know", speeds the condensation of forms into existence and their entrenchment as memories.
As memories lose their binding force, "priorly" free, formless consciousness is tacitly intuited, forms are witnessed as they condense from no-existence into existence and are realized as merely appearing, non-binding, and unnecessary manifestations-in-consciousness.
Intuitive freedom is realized as the "basis" of witnessing existence, rested as itself without any effort of identifying as itself.
Such is not a thoughtful conclusion, but a direct, pre-mental realization.
Only the binding force of memory obscures that realization.
more "2 cents" for your consideration and comment from that Mad Poet Rascal, yours truly:
On Thinking
The activity of (individuated) "conscious awareness" that precedes and leads to thought is not a thought or the conceptual preparation for a thought. By the time that happens, thought has already happened! We think before we know it.
The activity of (individuated) "conscious awareness" (attention) that precedes and leads to thought is feeling (feeling: imagined-remembered attention-intensity). It is the same kind of feeling that wells up in us in the midst of a conversation that makes us want to interrupt to say our piece. It is pre-verbal feeling imbued with intention -- and that is the preparation to think (or speak). It is an itch needing to be scratched.
Such feeling is coded into memory as (or with) associated language structures, so that when a feeling wells up, it triggers (or potentiates) a cascade of related, encoded thought-words just a-burgeoning (itchin') to get out.
Encoded thought-words are formalized, conventional (and only approximate) patternings of memory, intention, imagination, and attention that show up as speech patterns (the same as with thought patterns).
Sometimes, we have no words for a feeling. We are at a loss for words because we have no corresponding language (in memory) for them.
Sometimes, we have no words for a feeling but we can, by keeping attention in the feeling, imagine new ways of expressing in words.
But it all rides upon feeling.
So, no one need "pre-think" a thought in order to think, although one may do so, but it is we who are thinking, in any case. That's how it feels.
However, in that sense of "feeling before thinking", we are still not the origin of thinking because the feelings underlying thinking well up in us before we know it. The feelings infiltrate from relationships and from the unknown Unknown -- through the channels of attention (or relatedness) and imagination (otherness).
Only if we abide (only spontaneously and already) at the formless root of feeling ("Witness Consciousness"), prior to particular feelings, can we observe the gathering of attention and force that are the feelings that give rise to thought.
The "Witness-Consciousness" is both prior to feeling and thought (prior to attention, intention, memory and imagination -- "The Four Fundamental Faculties") -- and invested in them.
In its "prior" sense, the "Witness-Consciousness" is an only-spontaneous total-equilibrium state from which and in which all arises and to which all returns (hridayam).
In its "invested" sense, the Witness-Consciousness is intimate (to the degree of feeling identical) to conditional experience (non-separation or love) -- feelingit all.
The "prior:invested" Witness Consciousness is a paradox beyond mind, beyond both (turiyatita).
When one or more of The Four Fundamental Faculties (as I have just named them) persists in a modified state in a chronic, automatic (subconscious or unconscious) way, one never returns to rest, but persists in the turbulence of "self-identified self". ("Nar-Nar" -- you know)
Then, self-modification seems to be "otherness happening to us", rather than our own activity -- something that we must counteract or fulfill. In resistance to "otherness" (or insistence upon it), we cannot consciously intuit Witness Consciousness in its native state.
Modification of feeling-attention is an itch needing to be scratched -- seeking -- and it shows up (in one way) as thinking: chronic modification, chronic identity -- chronic self-contraction.
Imposition of prior Witness-Consciousness upon the limited, self-invested state (infiltration by communion with an apparent one who is awake beyond identification) presents a contrast by which conditional limitations may be recognized and released (surrendered) into What is Greater (turiyatita).
Never argue with a mime.
accumulated traditions over 12,000 years
intentional persistence
readiness idiocy
attention : readiness for movement
intention : readiness for a sensation
memory : readiness for the movement of sensation
imagination : readiness for the sensation of movement
One overriding human imperative is to name or identify things, and thus to know them, for the sake of exploiting (enjoying) them or for the sake of avoiding (controlling) them.
This identifying of things involves remembering them and remembering the intention one "should" have toward them -- a state of fixation that gets carried from generation to generation, that piles up and that ultimately becomes foolishness and stupidity as conditions change and yet we still compel ourselves and others to behave that way.
Identity: a complex of readiness states associated with a name or location of self
THE SYMBOL OF READINESS
stress patterns
readiness for action
avoidance of unreadiness
blind spots
various compulsive idiocies
behavioral idiocies
linguistic idiocies
retrogressive behavior
involuntary emotional responses without intelligence
lack of understanding necessary to recognize the need for transcendence
lack of means of transcendence
Readiness is a lie.
no one is ever ready
no one know how they will respond: the interaction is ALWAYS with an unknown
declarations of readiness are bravado
declarations of readiness are a "go ahead" without certain foreknowledge
means of transcendence
education
cultural artifacts
regulation or wise self-regulation
conditions
create balance as preparation
undermine intentional persistence
ambient education
course correction
restate elimination problem
restate solution
provide means
I think this can be clarified into a kind of simplicity.
"Power of repetition": alludes to memory. Memory is repetition. It's not merely mental memory; it's the persistence of ANY and ALL forms. In computers, memory refers to the persistence of electrical charges in semiconductor chips. The Universe is a scenario of materialized memory, persistent and yet perpetually changing, as memories do.
Among living beings on Earth, humans are the ones so memory-intensive. The memories have to do with living. They evolve from generation to generation -- but humans don't just substitute new memories for old ones, from generation to generation. Humans have very little control of memory, in the current form of humanity. Humans accumulate memories mostly automatically -- and otherwise with great effort.
Memories pile up automatically from generation to generation, passed both subliminally -- implicitly -- and overtly (explicitly) -- but humans, for the most part, have no capacity to dissolve memories. Thus, "The sins of the fathers are passed on to the children to the fourth generation."
"I'm impressed, newly impressed, with the insanity of human beings! Animals, plants, inert things are much more intelligent. They are simpler, more pure." (talk, Walking the Dog)
The pile-up of way-of-life memories, memories that have their use in their own generation, but that have piled up in this "late time" generation -- that pile-up produces a kind of massive, subconscious-and-conscious confusion -- "garbage softwares" -- that we experience as dilemma and discomfort.
Not all of it is garbage software, in any current generation. Some of it is functional, such as the "software" that maintains physiology or the "software" that produces the sophisticated technology of which He spoke. It exists in "nested" form, with some softwares (such as physiological softwares) supporting others (such as technological creativity). The supporting softwares are the "secret workings" that work in and for all generations.
The creative ones in any generation are those who are free of the binding effects of previous generations' softwares and so capable of originating something new. Their freedom lies in their freedom to remain "current", rather than mired in the past (memory).
Their freedom to create, the ability to recover comfort, the freedom from ego-patterning (idiotic programs of existence) comes from transcendence of the binding force of memory. "Transcendence" doesn't exclusion; it means to remain intelligently present to the content of experience without being bound by or to it..
The discomfort comes from the clash of obsolete memory-software programs that no longer function in harmony either with each other or with currently evolved conditions. The "pile-up discomfort" generates the sense of dilemma and leads to a kind of desperation that most people attempt to handle by acquiring new knowledge in the form of "solutions".
But those "solutions" become part of the mass of memory that causes the discomfort. Seeking solutions is exactly the wrong direction; therefore, conditional seeking is also exactly the wrong direction.
What is needed is transcendence of the binding force of memory.
The missing program, for the most part, is the "transcendence program."
The transcendence program emerges as people come to confront their interiority, their uninspected programming. At first, it occurs in a piecemeal fashion, as uninspected assumptions (memories) surface to attention from out of the background of life's automaticities.
Prior to that emergence, those programs operate outside of the reach of attention, hidden by their very familiarity, their, "the way things are", veneer -- the "memory program", itself. Then, programs operate as automatic intentions and imaginings confined by the force of memory to things close to what is familiar because of memory.
Later, commonalities of insight emerge. It is discerned that all programming involves FOUR fundamental programs:
Memory
Imagination
Attention
Intention
Those four fundamental programs are, in themselves, inherently "empty" or without inherent form. They are transcendental. They are the "superprogram" of the "superintelligent machine". They are "the first emergence".
They are made "immanent" (or experienceable) by self-definition -- the modifications of consciousness that persist as memories of function. They become defined, local, active and persistent. They become the flavor of "defined selves" and "defined experiences" in all of their forms.
As long as any or all of the Four operate outside of the reach of attention, conditions and conditionings (programs) persist, along with chronic discomfort and the "garbage" quality of experience (frustration). Experience is binding (bondage).
But an odd thing happens when all Four aspects of any event in consciousness surface and become recognizable: events in consciousness (forms of experience) soften, begin to mutate, and then, when all four are balanced and integrated, there emerges a sense of "encompassing" (containing) experience, rather than being contained by experience; the free-Witness position becomes intuitively obvious -- and then the event loses its form to the degree of disappearance. The intuition of a kind of "forceful radiance" appears, one with very consciousness, formless, but present.
The awakening and integration of The Four is the "transcendence program". It is the experience of consciousness awakening to its four-fold nature, paradoxically experienced as Emptiness or Formless Potentiality -- Conscious Light.
Thus, the Four, inherently empty, are also the substance of all experience. Emptiness is form.
Thus, creative life is entirely compatible with free consciousness. "Not-two". Creative life EXPRESSES the free condition in all its forms.
Thus, I have accounted for a bunch of stuff, including:
This is not a matter of an intellectual exercise on my part, some sort of mere analysis. I can speak so clearly of this only because I can refer to the intuition of it as a matter of direct experience.
The transformation is progressive, even as the fundamental intuition of this dynamic play is what it is, from the beginning.
Did that "ring your bell of intuition"?
(I've been poised upon writing all that up, for a while, under the prospective title, "Humanity Has an Elimination Problem. This post was the provocation that got me to write it. I wrote it in one quick pass, and made a few tweaks and additions upon the first reading of it, aloud.)
These piece talks about the four basic faculties of mind and the consequences of their uneven development.
Four things are going on in all of us all of the time.
You've heard of them, but perhaps not heard much about them.
Those four things are
PAYING ATTENTION
EXERCISING INTENTION
REMEMBERING
IMAGINING
These four things combine in every moment to give us our experience of life, even of physical reality.
However, they don't often develop evenly -- and when they don't develop evenly, trouble follows.
ALL FOUR ARE NEEDED for ANY of them TO FUNCTION
It may not have occurred to you, but to pay attention requires all four faculties to be awake and working well, together.
You can't pay attention to something without the intention to do so.
You can't pay attention, for long, unless you can remember what you are paying attention to.
You can't remember anything unless you have the intention to imagine it.
You can't follow something very well unless you can imagine where it might be headed, based on similar experience; otherwise, without remembering similar experiences everything is a surprise, to you, that catches you flat-footed. Anxiety (and performance anxiety) follows.
All four are needed.
THE TROUBLES of UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
It's pretty obvious what happens when a person doesn't pay attention. That when accidents happen, bad judgments are made, or things get missed that should have been seen.
Intention is equally important. A deficiency of intention leads to poor results, wrong results, or no results!
The results of poor memory are also pretty obvious, so I won't elaborate, here.
Poor imagination shows up as inept problem-solving, lack of foresight, and resistance to change.
Those are the superficial consequences of uneven development.
But there are deeper consequences of uneven development.
THE DEEPER CONSEQUENCES of UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT of the FACULTIES of MIND
Because all four faculties must operate as a unity to operate, at all, when one or more of them are poorly developed, the person feels out-of-control, or at best, vulnerable and insecure. At the very least, they feel unequal to the challenges of life.
That's when changes of circumstances can throw one for a loop. Any new situation (or stimulus) is more than a person feels they can handle. They feel overwhelmed, hypersensitive. Bad reactions or upsets occur. The person feels unable to cope. Anxiety ensues.
In extreme cases of uneven development, the person may be completely incapable of an ordinary life. They may seem overactive, ADD, neurotic, or clinically disturbed.
WHY DO THESE FOUR FACULTIES DEVELOP UNEVENLY?
Our culture values these four faculties unevenly and so they develop unevenly.
Consider education: It values memory above all the other faculties. People are taught to accumulate memories as if what they remember, alone, will save them. They're not taught how to direct and steady their attention, only that to pay attention may get them what they want or help them avoid what they don't want. It's somehow assumed that everybody is able to pay attention, if only they decide to do it (not something that anybody who has tried meditation believes). They're not taught to exercise intention particularly well; they're taught to get by with the least intention possible. They're not taught the value of imagination; they're taught to stop daydreaming -- and rather than to imagine, they're taught to give memorized "right answers" that came from somebody else!
In conventional education, it's a case of overdevelopment of memory at the expense of the other faculties.
Trauma also has a role in poor operation of these faculties. Trauma leads to suppression of memory, to not paying attention to anything resembling the traumatic situation, to suppressing imagining anything like the traumatic situation -- or to imagining anything but the traumatic situation as a way to avoid remembering it. It also leads to addictive behavior and irresponsible self-indulgence.
Imbalances of these faculties run in families. If the parents function poorly in one or more of these faculties, the children also tend to function poorly in similar ways because the parents are the children's examples of how to live. That's one reason why dysfunctions (deficiencies and eccentric behaviors) run in families.
Our final example is the entertainment media. They not only cater to a short attention span; they cultivate it.
Consider how often promotional advertising uses rapid successions of images less than one second in length. In addition to cultivating short attention-span, quick successions of images also prevent seeing and remembering details.
Consider how often video programs and movies get interrupted by advertising, breaking the continuity of attention.
So, family patterns, trauma, and cultural norms cultivate poor functioning of the basic faculties of mind.
QUIETING ANXIETY
When life is too much and anxiety ensues, the quickest way to quiet the anxiety is to get all four of these faculties awake, integrated, and balanced. It's much more difficult and much slower to change the circumstances that triggered anxiety.
Awakening and balancing these four faculties of mind works to quiet anxiety even when anxiety is well-justified!
There are particular procedures to awaken, integrate, and balance these faculties. They are known as The TetraSeed Awakening Invocations.
Here's an example:
POINT AND CLICK
There's no better way to understand how this kind of mind-training works than to test it. This first segment is an orientation to the procedure, called, "The Crystal Crown Invocation". In the upper-right corner of the video, you'll seen an ( i ) ("for more"); click it, and you be shown a link to take you to to the first full instructional video segment ("Act 1").
This has been an overview of the four basic faculties of mind and an introduction to the TetraSeed Awakening Invocations. You can find more detailed articles on The TetraSeed by searching for entries, on-line, by using the hashtag, or search-term, #TetraSeedAwakening.
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Lawrence Gold is a clinical somatic educator who has worked with clients facing life challenges and chronic pain, since 1990. He conducts live-on-line sessions with a world-wide clientele. Contact him by email.
Ruthlessness is an attribute of predation -- predatory action -- in service to privilege.
The "Trumpist" movement, mostly Republican, is ruthless. That is its character, as visible in Congressional actions. It applies both to politicians and to the people who elected them: they exemplify ruthlessness.
Ruthlessness is a set state of mind (emotion and rationalization) -- a mindset. It resists change and being changed.
One of the strategies of ruthlessness is to mask itself in the guise of fairness. Be alert, to that.
Ruthlessness in SERVICE to fairness is a benign form of ruthlessness -- empowered fairness. To distinguish (discriminate) clearly requires ruthless honesty.
In Greek mythology, there exists the story of the hero, Perseus.
Perseus was known for having slain the Gorgon, Medusa, one of the three Gorgon sisters known for their beauty.
The goddess, Athena, transformed Medusa's appearance so that any man who looked upon her turned to stone (hence, the mission to slay her). According to the Greek storyteller, Ovid, the once beautiful Medusa was punished by Athena with a hideous appearance and loathsome snakes for hair for having been raped in Athena's temple by Poseidon. Punishment for having been raped -- not fair and not sensible.
There is a more sensible interpretation, one that fits common experience. Men are commonly "petrified" (turned to stone -- immobilized) by the appearance of a beautiful woman, so that they cannot approach her. This reaction may be a development of Nature to protect beautiful women from men. The snakes-for-hair in the Medusa story help "explain" why men turned to stone -- a literary device.
The "petrified" part goes with "head over heels", entranced.
When standing, most of our weight goes through our heels -- more or less centered around a place on the heel just behind where the little toe ends, but inward.
Off center is off-balance.
Balanced is centered.
Head-over-Heels is balanced, but not going anywhere -- but if too far back, it makes one a pushover, off-balance
In the general vernacular, "Head-over-Heels" means, "in love". Most people are off-center and off-balance, and people apply the term to themselves to signify feeling emotionally off-balance. So, the term, "Head-over-Heels" has come to mean "a pushover".
And There We Are -- another case of "inverted meanings".
Here's The Invertor for reversing "inverted meanings".
