Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Redux of Fourth Way Introduction @ UCSB

There's a story involved which represents my introduction to Gurdjieff's Work, called The Fourth Way. As freshman at UCSB, I was in the book store early and often. I ran across a small compilation of lectures by a man named Ouspensky, perhaps Gurdjieff's most famous student, and a huge intellect who eventually wrote a book called The Fourth Way, really a compendium of G's lectures which are considered the basic layout of his Theory of All and Everything.

But to introduce this work, Ouspensky would say there are 3 basic ideas necessary to understand in order to even stand a chance of being in the Work. 1: Man cannot do. 2: Man lies about everything 3: We are not 1, but we are legion (meaning a person is not properly identified as a single individual, but a legion ~ an alignment with many others including those who work with the Enneagram which was one Gurdjieff's principle tools used in self-observation. ...

Now, I stood there and read his Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, and at the end was a challenge give regarding a reader personally verifying their being awake or not, present or not. Given any destination mapped to time and space, one simply commits themselves to staying conscious the entire trip and then when they actually reach the destination, and if a person is awake at that moment, that's a fairly rare and humongous achievement. So, the trip back to my dorm was as short 1/4 mile past all the other dorms and the eucalyptus trees which form a forest in which UCSB is built, right on the coast, at Goleta Point. My dorm wasn't more than 100 yards from the ocean.

And so I set out, and then 2 weeks later, I suddenly had the experience of waking up, or being conscious, as Gurdjieff puts it as Self-Remembering. I've been in this work now for 35 years, and believe when I say that is a beast (story) of a different nature. At any rate, Self-Remembering simply means a conscious effort at retaining a small percentage of one's attention to be directed by one's will and that direction inward to one's self. For everyone, this begins with a persistent failure with maintaining the state. And that is what Gurdjieff tells everyone, that somebody could ask men if they were awake and the very asking of that question produces a shock to the mind, in effect waking them up. And for a short moment or two, that person looks and in looking finds he/she is awake and thus responds I"m awake only in the very next moment they cease being awake and go back to sleep.

The point here is that being awake is a specific conscious choice and effort. Evolving one's consciousness to a HIGHER level or state, requires some consciousness to being with, and makes sense that it would require a higher conscious effort than currently being made in order for any positive results to occur. And finally, this is what all that other stuff is designed to support. It really is the only value that means anything in life, because if you're awake, what are you? Well, most people exist exactly as that, as a machine. The point here being that I certainly made it home that night in UCSB. How did that happen if I was asleep. We're all machines with mechanical functions to move, emote, think, etc., but none of which have anything to do with consciousness or Self. G called us 3 brained beings. But, the first step in G's work, is called Self-Observation, but that is only valuable insofar as a person builds up a psychic photo album of themselves expressing various different identifications within their own minds. This will possibly give rise later to a series of identifications leading ultimately to a permanent "I".

So, that was making a long story short! LOL Hope it helped you understand my earlier words, thanks for asking for this clarification.

Excerpt from FB TNM, on POWER

A few words about POWER...

omg ... who let the fruits out! LOL.

I can relate to Burt's existential pain but it seriously didn't unfold in my life until the day my father died, in my arms, when I was around 11. And then, a year later, leaving the Lutheran faith, when I was confirmed a member of the church. Such crap, completely launched me into a pessimistic search tho for the rest of my life. But before all the drama, I have recollections of being completely content and happy as a child. But, life clearly was holding something back later, and to a significant degree ownership was a key in reclaiming power, and yet for the strength of the value being discussed here, people saying things like "The point of power is to reclaim the authority over your emotions, recognize every emotion as one you are choosing to engage and to truly FEEL each one as it is present."

I mean, with all due respect, that is patently false. The point of power? Power doesn't have a point. But, I'm certainly willing to accept the influx and skew which communications like these naturally find occurring to them. Still, that may be a way that Shondra words her relation to power, but I would respectfully disagree with it just because it conceals power's reality in the main. But she's got a point as far as her point engages power in this ownership narrative. And then, of course, this is what I value most about these threads. Getting the opportunity to remind myself that what I say and what others hear are similar only to the degree that I've managed to understand and listen to the person I'm speaking to. Without that feeling regarding another person and how they use language, most everything I say will end up being misinterpreted. This, of course, was a large part of the breakdown in Emily's relationship, insofar as, and for whatever reason, commitment as a fundamental element to relationships seems only now to be breached. And that is a good thing ... to be cherished, like a milestone ... and let me be standing strong when I say that such moments are literally new beginnings and not opportunity's to raise red flags and get emotional, stressed, and/or unhappy. Dive in, dive deep, explore, letting things be just the way they are ... letting yourself assess things much later after a circumference as been obtained with respect to the issue at hand. Take your time, enjoy the trip. Take notes so the next time you have tickler to keep your focus spot on.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

~ I Feel Them Calling

I Feel Them Calling

To Shamanic Priestesses
with modern femininity and fun
strange spellings of their names
and a great emergence that I feel

Their calling

Here is there answer
in reply to the heart calling
That you are.
But have not found me.
Even when I've drawn so close
I need to be found now.

Like the 1st time.

Can you run me down
make your medicine great
Shaman woman

in the healing scent of your flower
I breathe in.

12/21/2016, rjd

Sunday, December 18, 2016

~ The Power and Gift of a Mother

The Power and Gift of a Mother

She was always there.
Turning Doomsdays' perfect Storms
Into last night's dreamscape
Nothing so powerful celebrates
Talking together, a joy will erupt
Beginning in a stiffened inhale
There's always a 'milk through the nose' exhale
maybe better calm, may descend
Life has grace with a tandem
polyamory is fashion king.
Sacred space our residence.
higher to lower is a relationship
between our inner and outer
as is often the case
I feel drawn to music 
more often than not
Sister yelled spoiled disgust
against better judgement
can't deny our irrationality

12/2016

~ San Francisco

San Franciso

Sun lights a Golden Gate
The wayward backdrop
to her incandescent smile
and a memory of romantic love
A confident woman of beauty and grace
Dreaming of her supermoon
and a magicians hypnotic gaze.

Her life remains a hilly place.

2016/12

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

~ Lady Garceau


Lady Garceau

Flying dirt, tufts of grass,
hoof, muscles, a neck extending,
sun
they’re off on unity
in erotic love
and I raging against my seat
on her back
how do I tell this girl
wind kicking me 
something heard only when
whispered?
when I remember 
something she called sacred
kept her from throwing me sideways
beyond all sex
Lady Garceau
rj, 2016, oct

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

~ On Missing Dad

Miss you Dad,

I know the words, and more
You never had a chance
I daresay to see it coming
time wounding your being
your destiny now cancelled
terribly terrific the existence.

The words just as hollow today.
More time passes, less that's left
to realize how late it feels
in the span of my life, I am
ready to concede the fail
for a life redeemed, or Not.

In your arms, atop your shoulders
your presence clarified by us.
I was the innocent child
As an adult, a lost promise
held memorial to our purpose.

I am alive and willing to witness
the truth of what you promised.
And I would have answers, or not
before my last breath ends this life.

Did you abandon me twice then?

Letting you go by choice is wrong
yet waiting only perpetuates it.
I can bear witness to wisdom
an eye for an eye as necessary
to undo the dark bonds of love.

I suffer doing what I feared done
I abandon my honor to words
you promised to my heart.
Leaving me to wait vainglory
as an abandoned child alone?

The echo of these hollows
sounds alive to a reverbed
vibrato skip box beat
horns get to celebrate
blowing tempest of laughter
as freedom recovers
the missing heart.

Copyright © 5/29/04, Robert James Duberg 
rev 5/2016

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

~ World on fire

Every blue moon
sees a cloudscape
ablaze with spiritual fire
and divine presence
even while the words
pointing beyond the veil
are sorely missing
never able to convey
such heavenly realms
possible and perchance
to find and discover within
despite the machination
and its common parlance
our path leads us through
and to, but not beyond, within.

One of the gordians of life
The path that deadends within
and what a path beyond means
Could there be a possibility?

 BOOKS:  Gordians of Life, A Slayer's Method

Saturday, February 27, 2016

~ In a Blaze

I see intelligent structure
opportunities to succeed
learn about ourselves, each other
and the reigning powers
opportunities to serve, dissent
and plenty of latitude to drift
adrift in foggy notion
for those not wanting to respond
alot of life doesn't make sense
and doors to life show up as a script
for which we are blamed with shame
and to which habit claims the innocent
and for which courage is her genius.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The Inner Woman by Zulma Reyo

Just started this book by a female teacher, an outlier, not really connected with any traditional lineage of higher thought or conciousness, and I have really enjoyed her words I think most because of the harmony and resonance they express to the paradigm of 4th way thought by Gurdjieff.  The following is an excerpt from one of the first chapters of her book, The Inner Woman:
When you awaken to this state of the art through the right combination and exercise of feeling and reason, you can as a woman incarnate the Feminine Principle that contains the male as seed within. And men can embody the Male Principle, engulfing the female qualities around its power core. 
          ~ Reyo, Zulma (2012-09-18).

This passage is also very reflective of Taoism, repreenting fairly the symbol for the Tao.




I have been given a synthesis of previous teachings in the words of Zulma Reyo on the crest of the 3rd or 4th wave of feminism, it would appear. I'm concerned that I no longer have the energy reserves for following this, but with her book in hand I shall proceed, as much as on a daily basis to make progress in my reading.






This symbol representing western medicine is the other predominant brand for my life, tho it really needs to be modified and redesigned to reflect my role as patient with ESRF and CHF, rather than as a healer. Wouldn't it be great if I could reverse this situation from the shadow to the light source?




This is a photograph I took upon receiving my Canon in a UCSD class I was taking towards my certificate for Graphic Design and Web Design.  It is a picture of a comtrail from a jet which has somehow been disturbed creating this symbolic rendition of the two serpents facing each other which can be seen in the medical symbol above.  I thought it rather fateful and serendiptious, though there hasn't been much like this since then (10 years and counting) except the one night I stepped out of my room into the household hallway in the dark and on top of a serpent there (have you ever stepped on a snake in your bare feet?) which was my roommate's escaped pet waiting for me, why?  The symbology is deep and foretelling.

Sunday, January 03, 2016

Goddess Relations

This is the year of the goddess, and already I've been given a fitting rejection by White Tigress Society, tantamount to being expelled or exiled from some social group. This one happen to be one dedicated to empowering women and I was merely voicing my challenge to the lack of balance and equity. They weren't having any of that, no. For them, the solution to the inequity today is to give women all the power. Anyway ... they did me a favor I think. They're not going to change for me only for them. As far as I can tell, they only want to use a man for his energy, and so the whole training they give a man is in support of his gift to them being realized, and nothing else, ha ha ha. No thanks.