Finding a Faith not Easy

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

If one is pressed hard, 

it is so that one may find faith and become free. 

Our pasts are full of weak places, evasions, dishonesties, 

that we thought were buried and forgotten. 

But they have to come out. Sometimes it is very bitter. 

Now with this strong influence that is shining on us, 

all the flaws are appearing. Nothing can be hidden any more. 

Because everything has to be firm and solid under our work. 

So when we are hard-pressed, 

struggling with the consequences of the past, 

it is really proof that our work is strong and right. 

It means that we are being given a chance to go faster. 

If all the consequences of the past come to the surface 

it is so that we may face them 

and become free of them once and for all. 

And under great pressure 

one may find a faith one would never need at ease. 

~Rodney Collin 

The Theory of Conscious Harmony

academyofeuropeanarts.com

Plans/Notes/Sketches

Can you stand in the fire and take the heat?

Sustainable design can be defined as appropriate participation in natural process; and appropriateness should be judged by the extent to which a certain design maintains the overall dynamic stability, resilience, flexibility, adaptability, or health of the system as a whole.  - Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl,

Quantum Computing - Building a machine like us…
- Machine feels like an alter to a deity.
- 2 mutually exclusive states at the same time available in quantum computing
- Cubits a point of nexus where two parallel universes connect
- Moore’s law, every year the number of cubits doubles
- increase of speed is beyond belief, orders of magnitudes.

Predictions - 3  - dangerous
- silicone valley unease regarding technological advancements.  Our talent is to immersed in building crap, stuff that is not important.
- 1st:  Within 5 years NASA will find Earth II, one of the QC machines will bear used to get there
- 2nd:  Gravitational Lensing
- 3rd: Humanity is on the cusp of the most important technological revolution to occur, the point where the machines will out pace us in every respect. (15 years)

Having a Happy Connected Life
- prevents addiction
- addiction is an adaptation to your environment
- Having purpose, bonds, relationsbips extends prevention
- The opposite of addiction is connection

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." - by Soren Kierkegaard

A Better Perspective on Anger ~ DRAFT

Easily the best perspective to begin working on Anger. The way I see it ... until we come to a place inside where I choose whether I'm angry or not and enthusiastically enjoy that choice; in the meantime, I have found by not expressing it but rather re-channeling it into a positive and productive form is key. In order to tilt that playing field in my direction, I remind myself at every opportunity that my best performances include a significant percentage in which I was angry and found a way to use that level of energy to achieve something positive. Those possibilities are limited without a doubt, but isn't that the point? Maybe by doing this prelim step, there will be things you didn't notice before and which are far more important to you?

Mental Illness Symptoms our President might have...

Certainly, those alleged symptoms could make sense as something else looking from another world view right? What does his ability to gaslight the media on a daily basis mean anyway. And, I'm still waiting for our nation's legal ethics eagles to rally themselves and impeach.

Something else to consider is the numerous reports of Trump in private setting and how the change of countenance which overtakes him is profoundly different and not narcissistic they say, hmmm? And ... I am also a devil's advocate, and think Trump is mentally ill as well, despite what I just said above.

He destroyed a third of our federal govt in less than 100 days. He's done more damage to the federal govt than any other individual has ever or ever could do. And, really, all we can do is breathe in deep, exhale calm waves back to the flux and open ourselves to the lesson being taught. What is that you might say? I don't know exactly. Give me some time, but for the moment there is present a stellar view into the a major imperfection in democracy, one that seems only to be growing larger. Will rational men still in power rally together and investigate the truth as well as punish anything treasonous they find.

Taking Pause for a Self-Reflective Sharing Update

What is the heart of empathic response, the ability to walk in another person's shoes, to appreciate their perspective, world view, conditioning, habits, linguistic development, their intellectual depth and critical reason, not ot mention all the pathologies of life, the trauma, child wounds, etc., etc., all these things weave together to form a veil we call life. The weave forms around a principle we call relativity. Now the question seems to me to be on what gradients can relative truth aka life according and occuring to the individual be understood on a vertical axis as both higher and better.

For me, this possibility shows up as a function of consciousness, and to Art's credit regarding liberating ourselves from unconscious weaves we've picked up since birth, slipping those chains through an act of consciousness, I have found supports an expanding consciousness which in turn provides a far greater space for one's perspective to unfold. The first principle of consciousness then, would be a work in progress that could be characterized as a process of unfolding. Nothing is static and yet we are only beginning to recognize the difficulty our language has in communicating this element of truth, but in that struggle our consciousness ascends/increases in power and in its overall appreciation those perspectives which we still contain remaining in the shadowy corners of our minds, but when triggered often create much discord and conflict due to not yet being given a thorough examination for whether they are for instance old school flatland legacies with a closeminded self-righteousness or they have begun to transform into progressive evolving increasingly encompassing and embodied IDEAS which we come to experience as sensations and not just the static conceptual language by which our psychologies associate to.

To this end for instance, my preference for my own wiggle room within my own perspectives is at once an unfolding humility which transcends my ego in a conscious embrace of the mysterious and ineffable. So it is, that I offer my perpectives not as inviolate fortifications, but my own conscious work that I am prepared at any moment to let go of, for love's sake, if presented with another perspective more consonant with my intuitive insights and yet not limited to needing such inspiration to change.

There remains to some extent a need to bring others up to greater heights in the possibilities surrounding them if only because I have crossed certain thresholds in which communication with another forms something of an anchor for and empowerment as well for my choice of perspective. My experience has been that it is far more satisfying to share a perspective (always in progress) in which harmony, and far deeper dimensions of love are accessible. Such perspectives though require a mutality of commitment and devoted reverence to properly gain the kind of relief one might imagine.

The conclusion here remains though that everyone is right from their own particular point of view, given a sufficient critical facility of reason and unobstructed unoppressed relations in the world. The differences that can be made are all varying degrees of distinct perspectives one might find consistently and coherently mapped out on say a Wilberian AQAL model.

Thanks for listening dudes/dudettes

In a mountainous retreat of sensitive insight

I once thought long ago while on a retreat that I was feeling the Earth's spin as a warmth of friction wherever gravity brought me in contact with her ground. It's a ultra subtle feeling of being thrown and miraculously barely holding on, LOL, just sittin here quiet, LOL

Meryl Streep's heart break over Pres Elect Buffoon

I actually felt a little vindicated by her admonitions regarding where "the press" has not served the people's need for objective fact checking and holding our leaders accountable for what they say and do. I've been talking about this starting last summer as I began to witness Trump's spectre rise in power with his potent smoke and mirrors display calling out to the disenfranchised with such a twisted pitch to both fool them and yet convince them they're finally being defended by their own champion and Trumps constituency want's blood. I have only compassion for them, but the press is a different matter.

A lot can also be said for the influence of the social media which is not only out of control but lacking as well in any discipline which keeps the way clear so that evolution of man continues unabated.

Request from TNM for help, comment on modern expression of being single ....

Anyone having or better yet (had, past tense) trouble asking for help. And, I mean for even the smallest pettiest needs, that my ESRF is constantly pulling me away from. I would really appreciate it if there are any clean methods (vs consumeristic versions with their shiny packaging, meaning nothing substantive) for dealing inwardly with one's self about this impossible condition I"ve habituated myself to my entire life?

I saw an ad here the other day for a workshop on learning how to sell and teach what one's current lifestyle is, in a word monetizing one's recordable wake through life. I basically threw up in my mouth almost ... insanity.

A new update to my lexicon of common parlance in thish day an age ... being single is now being referred to as ethically non-monogamous. The illusion of separation is officially coming off my collective experience in life with others. Look to Karyn Amore for this inspired self-expression which is just the beginning to her beauity and grace, intelligence and wisdom. Celebrate her message and its skyrocketing frequency. Cheers, rj

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.

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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

~ 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.

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.

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.

Dad's transcendending Death

So ... the story goes about 2 weeks before dad died Arthur was visiting it was late. He and I were playing cards or risk or stratego and Dad was pacing the hallway when he stopped us and talked about having a purpose after he dies in the afterlife if there was one and was that he wanted to come back and communicate the existence of the afterlife if it was in anyway a possibility and he said he would promise to make it happen. Neither Arthur or I had any impending sense about his very fast approaching death so we neither gave too much much attention to it, but then about 2 weeks later while home alone with him while my mom tended the liquor store in San sidro, he asked me to help him to the bathroom and after a couple of minutes I heard a crash from the next room came running in to find him slumped over the toilet in severe jaw clenching pain. I got him on the floor and cradled his head in my lap and then began to run my lists associated with just such a unprepared for disaster. After improvised CPR, chest pounding, hysteric pleading, during a moment of calm, I felt the heat draining from him and came face to face with his movement into ash, next I called my mom, and after that I began a serious wail. In the following year however, this conversation he had with Arthur and I kept popping up for me, especially during times of loneliness when his absence was most felt, it has for most of my life been an insult to the tragedy that I felt. 

Over time, I've simply moved on and forgotten his promise and the huge disappointment in his not being able to keep it. It was only until a few days ago that the true character of that man, his demonstrating leadership and being a leader, showed up for me in that last totally unselfish stand which he took for the benefit of his sons, which he did with total conviction against all odds. It's just breathtaking for me to consider it today and such a warm glow of pride wells up in my heart. Until this epithany a few days ago I would never have dreamed I'd ever be able to confess to this massive transformation and appreciation I feel towards him today. So it is .. and you the first person I've shared this with! I can't take full credit for this amazing shift in my relationship with him though, there was been a recent startup of some work with Werner Erhard in the domain of, you guessed it, Leadership ... and I'm going to find no resistance at all to returning to that lesson plan after having this initial resolution to a lifelong feeing of loss and abandonment and disappointment. Just within my own personal sphere I can't recall a greater leader than my father who was so magnanimous that he was calling out what he saw possible even after his death ... and his conviction and vision for that possibility was total ... I could spend 10 lifetimes I think and still not exhaust the inspiration that one moment of his leadership gave and continues to give me.