Conformal Cyclic Meditation

[AshvinP]

Yes... well at this point the surest way to take control over the intellectualizing tendencies and the horrible third person view, seems to be to stop writing, stop reading all these third person accounts (that as long as not inhabited are true just as much as their opposite), and pray and exercise instead. No way around, because the way around is the panoramic third person view. Reading a post is kind of the definition of third person! It's looking at someone else's thoughts. I can try to make them mine, but if I don't get what's meant (mandatory third person) and if I don't know how to imitate them (I have a habit of exercise) it's hopeless…

I may have gotten too carried away in my last post. I can see how these things read as a third person account of spiritual dynamics and could then be working at cross-purposes to what you are trying to accomplish. But I am wondering whether you felt that way also about Cleric's last post?

I think it's important to always consider what you are doing with your thinking while trying to decipher the meaning of the posts. In this way, reading and working through the posts can itself become a spiritual exercise (which you should definitely pray over, as well). What is the relationship between the concepts, the words and the sentences, the images and illustrations, and the deeper intuition which you try and incarnate within them to illuminate their holistic first-person meaning? I suppose it is helpful to first be clear on what is meant by 'incarnation' in this context. It's the same for our understanding of corporeal incarnation. The spirit descends from its pure intuitve existence to clothe itself in bodily forms which it can use as instruments for its becoming within certain flows of sensory-intellectual resistance, which then strenghtens its (mostly instinctual) soul-capacities of W-F-T as it works to overcome the resistance. Within its human adult thinking stage of existence in a given incarnation, it begins incarnating itself within the mental pictures and intellectual concepts for the same purpose. When you read a post, your thinking spirit is incarnating within the perecptual-conceptual forms to permeate them with consciousness and recover the intuitive meaning in clear contours, and this is a continual, rhythmically alternating process (hysteresis).

Most of Cleric's posts center around fleshing out what exactly this incarnational process entails, which is happening all the time, in every moment of our thinking existence, and how to make it more conscious. So I want to ask whether you are following that aspect of it?

[Federica]

Yes... well at this point the surest way to take control over the intellectualizing tendencies and the horrible third person view, seems to be to stop writing, stop reading all these third person accounts (that as long as not inhabited are true just as much as their opposite), and pray and exercise instead. No way around, because the way around is the panoramic third person view. Reading a post is kind of the definition of third person! It's looking at someone else's thoughts. I can try to make them mine, but if I don't get what's meant (mandatory third person) and if I don't know how to imitate them (I have a habit of exercise) it's hopeless…

I may have gotten too carried away in my last post. I can see how these things read as a third person account of spiritual dynamics and could then be working at cross-purposes to what you are trying to accomplish. But I am wondering whether you felt that way also about Cleric's last post?

I think it's important to always consider what you are doing with your thinking while trying to decipher the meaning of the posts. In this way, reading and working through the posts can itself become a spiritual exercise (which you should definitely pray over, as well). What is the relationship between the concepts, the words and the sentences, the images and illustrations, and the deeper intuition which you try and incarnate within them to illuminate their holistic first-person meaning? I suppose it is helpful to first be clear on what is meant by 'incarnation' in this context. It's the same for our understanding of corporeal incarnation. The spirit descends from its pure intuitve existence to clothe itself in bodily forms which it can use as instruments for its becoming within certain flows of sensory-intellectual resistance, which then strenghtens its (mostly instinctual) soul-capacities of W-F-T as it works to overcome the resistance. Within its human adult thinking stage of existence in a given incarnation, it begins incarnating itself within the mental pictures and intellectual concepts for the same purpose. When you read a post, your thinking spirit is incarnating within the perecptual-conceptual forms to permeate them with consciousness and recover the intuitive meaning in clear contours, and this is a continual, rhythmically alternating process (hysteresis).

Most of Cleric's posts center around fleshing out what exactly this incarnational process entails, which is happening all the time, in every moment of our thinking existence, and how to make it more conscious. So I want to ask whether you are following that aspect of it?

It wasn’t a critique to your or Cleric’s posts, in any way, Ashvin. I always find a wealth of ‘insights’ in them (maybe that’s the problem). And I am not “feeling this way about'' any specific post. I am rather feeling this way about myself. The third person accounts coming to mind were actually Steiners, for instance the one of being at the center of evolution, or also not, or the one of the 12 worldviews, all holding an equal share of truth, as per your recent, most resolute, take in which all opposite spiral in the processes of the first person viewpoint, rather than stand as irrelevant data points of the mind.

This being said, it seems clear that, if I have to take your recommendations seriously, the third person caveat applies, by force of reality, to anything I might read, including all posts of this forum, as long as my process of reading through them is not “one in which the content of the post becomes increasingly united with what I am doing to comprehend it”, as you previously said. In my case, well, I wouldn’t wish Cleric's post to be too much united with what I was doing to comprehend it... that wouldn’t be very nice to his content, to say the least
Jokes aside, I obviously enjoy being on the forum, reading and writing, but is it what I should be doing, if the effect is that I keep myself stuck in an illusory perspective, and busy building Cosmos jigsaw puzzles with the thought pieces that I find on the shore of the illustrations?

I used to think, as you say, that trying to grasp for example that last rhythms-post with a certain intention was an exercise in itself, because the illustration contains the reminders for how to experiment with the thought-image, or the intuition, and how to recognize a process at different scales of reality with us at the center. So yes, to answer your question, I thought I was appreciating and following that, to some extent. But it’s not working great. Cleric just wrote that there’s nothing one can do with acting on fingers to grow a hand. The hand that unites the fingers “can only grow as a new organ of our thinking organism.” What else can this mean other than it's necessary to develop new thinking strength through exercise?

[AshvinP]

Yes... well at this point the surest way to take control over the intellectualizing tendencies and the horrible third person view, seems to be to stop writing, stop reading all these third person accounts (that as long as not inhabited are true just as much as their opposite), and pray and exercise instead. No way around, because the way around is the panoramic third person view. Reading a post is kind of the definition of third person! It's looking at someone else's thoughts. I can try to make them mine, but if I don't get what's meant (mandatory third person) and if I don't know how to imitate them (I have a habit of exercise) it's hopeless…

I may have gotten too carried away in my last post. I can see how these things read as a third person account of spiritual dynamics and could then be working at cross-purposes to what you are trying to accomplish. But I am wondering whether you felt that way also about Cleric's last post?

I think it's important to always consider what you are doing with your thinking while trying to decipher the meaning of the posts. In this way, reading and working through the posts can itself become a spiritual exercise (which you should definitely pray over, as well). What is the relationship between the concepts, the words and the sentences, the images and illustrations, and the deeper intuition which you try and incarnate within them to illuminate their holistic first-person meaning? I suppose it is helpful to first be clear on what is meant by 'incarnation' in this context. It's the same for our understanding of corporeal incarnation. The spirit descends from its pure intuitve existence to clothe itself in bodily forms which it can use as instruments for its becoming within certain flows of sensory-intellectual resistance, which then strenghtens its (mostly instinctual) soul-capacities of W-F-T as it works to overcome the resistance. Within its human adult thinking stage of existence in a given incarnation, it begins incarnating itself within the mental pictures and intellectual concepts for the same purpose. When you read a post, your thinking spirit is incarnating within the perecptual-conceptual forms to permeate them with consciousness and recover the intuitive meaning in clear contours, and this is a continual, rhythmically alternating process (hysteresis).

Most of Cleric's posts center around fleshing out what exactly this incarnational process entails, which is happening all the time, in every moment of our thinking existence, and how to make it more conscious. So I want to ask whether you are following that aspect of it?

It wasn’t a critique to your or Cleric’s posts, in any way, Ashvin. I always find a wealth of ‘insights’ in them (maybe that’s the problem). And I am not “feeling this way about'' any specific post. I am rather feeling this way about myself. The third person accounts coming to mind were actually Steiners, for instance the one of being at the center of evolution, or also not, or the one of the 12 worldviews, all holding an equal share of truth, as per your recent, most resolute, take in which all opposite spiral in the processes of the first person viewpoint, rather than stand as irrelevant data points of the mind.

This being said, it seems clear that, if I have to take your recommendations seriously, the third person caveat applies, by force of reality, to anything I might read, including all posts of this forum, as long as my process of reading through them is not “one in which the content of the post becomes increasingly united with what I am doing to comprehend it”, as you previously said. In my case, well, I wouldn’t wish Cleric's post to be too much united with what I was doing to comprehend it... that wouldn’t be very nice to his content, to say the least
Jokes aside, I obviously enjoy being on the forum, reading and writing, but is it what I should be doing, if the effect is that I keep myself stuck in an illusory perspective, and busy building Cosmos jigsaw puzzles with the thought pieces that I find on the shore of the illustrations?

I used to think, as you say, that trying to grasp for example that last rhythms-post with a certain intention was an exercise in itself, because the illustration contains the reminders for how to experiment with the thought-image, or the intuition, and how to recognize a process at different scales of reality with us at the center. So yes, to answer your question, I thought I was appreciating and following that, to some extent. But it’s not working great. Cleric just wrote that there’s nothing one can do with acting on fingers to grow a hand. The hand that unites the fingers “can only grow as a new organ of our thinking organism.” What else can this mean other than it's necessary to develop new thinking strength through exercise?

Federica,

Thanks for clarifying. And I will take some blame for that as well, since I am the one quoting Steiner, hoping that it will be complementary, but is perhaps only adding more details than are necessary at this time.

I think that I know pretty well the feeling you are speaking of. There was a time when I felt like I couldn't even meditate with an iota of concentration because of my intellectual tendency to keep grasping from the side with finger-concepts. For ex., if I read the last exercise from Cleric about orienting WFT temporally, in practical application I would keep inwardly repeating the words he wrote about orienting WFT as a way to do the exercise. I found it very difficult to internalize the inner meaning of what was expressed in the words and let that flow into my meditative thinking-gestures. Sometimes I still struggle with that but not as much. Although minimizing writing/reading could certainly be helpful if its cutting into our 'quiet time' with our own intimate activity, I don't think that is what really helped me. Really it was more about what Cleric said:

From this point onwards it’s all a matter of patience and persistence. If we want our being to incarnate its whole hand, it is up to us to prepare the soil. We continue to exercise the wiggles of the fingers, even if we get frustrated that we can’t build the hand out of the fingers, no matter how fast we switch focus between them. We have to wait for time to enter and incarnate the hand

We should keep in mind that Time is preparing the soil through our finger-wiggling struggles. All these struggles provide fuel for the sparks of higher Ideas when they incarnate. What we struggle with inwardly usually indicates something we that we are lacking and therefore need to confront head on, with humility and prayerful petition (which I don't think you have any issue with), rather than avoid. It is something one-sided within us which needs to be made more well-rounded. When we think about it, if there was no struggle or minimal struggle, that would defeat the purpose of realizing the ideal of spiritual freedom. Again, I'm not presuming to know what's best for you at this time or whether there is some other deeper reason to cut back on the forum, but I will say this with confidence - if we confront what is unfamiliar, difficult to understand, just out of reach, etc. and are able to stick with it and resist frustration, especially when we know there is something of vital importance involved, that itself is a critical exercise, regardless of whether we comprehend the content, and will be immensely strengthening of our spiritual activity, taking it from the sphere of the personal closer to the Cosmic. Eventually the content will light up in us of its own accord.

Here is a relevant passage which avoids the details of spiritual science and which I found inspirational.

Despite all that has been said, the way of the ascetic cannot be the way for present-day man. On some other occasion we will consider the reason. In our time it is perfectly possible, through inner self-discipline and training of the will, to take in hand one's development which is otherwise left to education and the experiences of life. One's personality can be strengthened by training the will. One can, for example, say to oneself: Within five years I shall acquire a new habit and during that time I shall concentrate my whole will power upon achieving it. When the will is trained in this way, for the sake of inner perfection, then one loosens, without ascetic practices, the soul-spiritual from the bodily nature. The first discovery, when such training of the will is undertaken for the sake of self-improvement, is that a continuous effort is needed. Every day something must be achieved inwardly. Often it is only a slight accomplishment, but it must be pursued with iron determination and unwavering will. It is often the case that if, for example, such an exercise as concentration each morning upon a certain thought is recommended, people will embark upon it with burning enthusiasm. But it does not last, the will slackens and the exercise becomes mechanical because the strong energy which is increasingly required is not forthcoming. The first resistance to be overcome is one's own lethargy; then comes the other resistance, which is of an objective nature, and it is as if one had to fight one's way through a dense thicket. After that, one reaches the experience that hurts because thinking, which has gradually become strong and alive, has found its way into the rhythm of the external world and begins to perceive the direction of space — in fact, perceive what is alive. One discovers that higher knowledge is attainable only through pain.

I can well picture people today who want to embark upon the path leading to higher worlds. They make a start and the first delicate spiritual cognition appears. This causes pain, so they say they are ill; when something causes pain one must be ill. However, the attainment of higher knowledge will often be accompanied by great pain, yet one is not ill. No doubt it is more comfortable to seek a cure than continue the path. Attempts must be made to overcome this pain of the soul which becomes ever greater as one advances. While it is easier to have something prescribed than continue the exercises, no higher knowledge is attained that way. Provided the body is robust and fit for dealing with external life, as is normally the case at the present time, this immersion in pain and suffering becomes purely an inner soul path in which the body does not participate. When man allows knowledge to approach him in this way, then the pain he endures signifies that he is attaining those regions of spiritual life out of which the great religions were born. The great religious truths which fill our soul with awe, conveying as they do those lofty regions in which, for example, our immortality is rooted, cannot be reached without painful inner experiences.

This being said, it seems clear that, if I have to take your recommendations seriously, the third person caveat applies, by force of reality, to anything I might read, including all posts of this forum, as long as my process of reading through them is not “one in which the content of the post becomes increasingly united with what I am doing to comprehend it”, as you previously said. In my case, well, I wouldn’t wish Cleric's post to be too much united with what I was doing to comprehend it... that wouldn’t be very nice to his content, to say the least

Although I recognize this was meant as a joke, I feel it's important to stress that there is no question of what you are doing to comprehend it. What you are doing is exactly what Cleric is illustrating through the post. We all do the same thing - we all share the same incarnational thinking rhythms in every inner gesture to navigate and comprehend the World Content. The only question is how conscious are we of what we are all doing? That is what makes the difference between it remaining as frustrating 3rd person abstraction and first-person living experience.

[Cleric K]

I used to think, as you say, that trying to grasp for example that last rhythms-post with a certain intention was an exercise in itself, because the illustration contains the reminders for how to experiment with the thought-image, or the intuition, and how to recognize a process at different scales of reality with us at the center. So yes, to answer your question, I thought I was appreciating and following that, to some extent. But it’s not working great. Cleric just wrote that there’s nothing one can do with acting on fingers to grow a hand. The hand that unites the fingers “can only grow as a new organ of our thinking organism.” What else can this mean other than it's necessary to develop new thinking strength through exercise?

Federica,

As Ashvin said, it’s normal to go through such periods of inner polarization. Now you think that what you have been doing has been quite orthogonal to the first-person perspective. And maybe some of it has been but you know that you’ve already had more than a few first-person insights. Think about the golf car metaphor that you wrote to Anthony. Doesn’t this count as a first-person insight? And if you return a year back, do you think that if someone presented to you that metaphor it would make sense? You see, maybe it’s not clear to you right now but this difference between your state a year ago and the one which was able to express the golf car metaphor, is precisely something of the hand that we speak of. Through your efforts you have made it possible for something of your deeper intuitive being to awaken and recognize itself in the thought-images of the golf-car metaphor.

Yes, it is true that the intensity of the states that we reach in our meditative exercises will increase. This also means that your self-image and understanding of what you are will also change. These are sensitive things and shouldn’t be rushed. What’s important is to use such moments of polarization and simply pay attention, learn something about ourselves. Because these moments pass. This is part of the learning process. Our thinking self is carried on the waves of feelings. These feelings are often powerful, at a given moment we feel desperate, we feel that we’re moving away from our ideal instead of getting closer. Then tides change and courage and insight flow in us. We have to learn to work with these tides. Actually they give us a hint about when we should give priority to prayer and when to use the waves of inspiration to probe the inner world.

Remember your dream. And I’m not even speaking of the concrete understanding of the clock dials. The thing is that in the loosened soul body you felt something of the higher intuition that gradually descends towards waking cognition. At this point the form of the intellectual self couldn’t accommodate the intuition. The intuition might have been ‘round’ but the intellectual constellation is a ‘rectangle’. Actually your dream experience can serve as a great motivator because you know that your being that already lives in higher intuition is very close. It’s a matter of gradual rounding of some corners of the rectangle. And you’re already doing this for quite some time.

[Federica]

Ashvin, Cleric, thank you for your encouragement! Although my motivation is solid, it couldn’t have given me what your comments have!
Yes, there is some frustration that I keep on falling in the blind spot, but I don't feel I’m going through a phase of inner polarization, or that my intellect is taking the lead more than before. Rather, I observe in the mirror of the forum that, as the journey continues, and the difficulty increases in various ways, my understanding doesn’t really measure up. And I know I should be aware of my preferences, too, not let them guide my choices.

Ashvin, yes, I intend to persist with what is unfamiliar and difficult, and resist the frustration. The thought of reading and writing less was the opposite of an avoidance strategy. I really hope you won’t cut on the Steiner quotes because of that, please don't, there is not the least blame to take! Regarding what I am doing with my thinking, I’d prefer to say it like that: maybe my higher self is doing the same thing, but my lower one, which is connected here and writing to you right now, clearly does other stuff with thinking, suffice to read the very different comments it produces
Cleric, yes, I was happy with the golf cart metaphor, although it was unsuccessful at convincing Anthony, it was not what he needed. Thank you for mentioning the dream, what you say would never have occurred to me, and it is highly motivating indeed!

Regarding reading less and praying and exercising more - I am not going to fight my preferences when they are backed by such allies. I guess I'll have to progress through more persistence and dedication, while I keep active here.

[AshvinP]

Regarding what I am doing with my thinking, I’d prefer to say it like that: maybe my higher self is doing the same thing, but my lower one, which is connected here and writing to you right now, clearly does other stuff with thinking, suffice to read the very different comments it produces

I don't know about the quality of comments - from my perspective, we are not too far apart, and usually we are not the best objective judge of our own writing or our qualities in general. We tend to overestimate or underestimate them pretty radically. I have certainly derived value from your holistic and uniquely presented summaries of the ideas expressed here.

But you make a good point - it's somehwat meaningless for me to say, "we are all doing the same thing with our thinking". It leans in to the 3rd person view from the side too much. It's like saying, "we are all the omnipresent, omnipotent Godhead in essence". See, I struggle with that perspective as well! The key point for me is that we are all struggling mightily with the lower self which obscures our essential incarnational rhythms from first-person view. There are actually many times when I get overly frustrated with myself when reading Steiner, Cleric, Scaligero, etc. and not being able to see how it all fits together, even though I know that it does. I try to connect it with insights I have had before and it doesn't seem to match up or may even seem to contradict those insights, so I know that I am dealing with some soul-blockages and orthogonal perspective, but I don't know where they are to begin with.

Like I mentioned before, we can make this an exercise. We can take it as a challenge to remain calm and composed and trusting in our more wise intuitve being. I do this with basketball games now. When I watch my local team, I first put it on mute so as to avoid the bombardment of annoying noises and commercials and commentating Then I make an effort to not identify with 'my' team, but to simply appreciate the skill sets, the teamwork, and the striving for perfection on both sides of the ball. It's not easy - my lower self is constantly provoking instinctual flourishes of anger and frustration when 'my' team makes a bonehead play, or the ref misses an obvious foul call, etc. By all measures, this is something someone on a path of spiritual training should have easily conquered, but I still have trouble with it. Nevertheless I have utmost confident this will lead to great inner results if I persist with the challenge.

Of course sports games are in fact something we can easily do without, if we really desire to. But it's hard to say the same for this forum and especially Cleric's posts. We simply won't find anything which explores the inner landscape like they do, not even in Steiner, Klocek, etc. So I am glad to hear you will keep reading and remaining active as well!

[Anthony66]

Ashvin, Cleric, thank you for your encouragement! Although my motivation is solid, it couldn’t have given me what your comments have!
Yes, there is some frustration that I keep on falling in the blind spot, but I don't feel I’m going through a phase of inner polarization, or that my intellect is taking the lead more than before. Rather, I observe in the mirror of the forum that, as the journey continues, and the difficulty increases in various ways, my understanding doesn’t really measure up. And I know I should be aware of my preferences, too, not let them guide my choices.

Ashvin, yes, I intend to persist with what is unfamiliar and difficult, and resist the frustration. The thought of reading and writing less was the opposite of an avoidance strategy. I really hope you won’t cut on the Steiner quotes because of that, please don't, there is not the least blame to take! Regarding what I am doing with my thinking, I’d prefer to say it like that: maybe my higher self is doing the same thing, but my lower one, which is connected here and writing to you right now, clearly does other stuff with thinking, suffice to read the very different comments it produces
Cleric, yes, I was happy with the golf cart metaphor, although it was unsuccessful at convincing Anthony, it was not what he needed. Thank you for mentioning the dream, what you say would never have occurred to me, and it is highly motivating indeed!

Regarding reading less and praying and exercising more - I am not going to fight my preferences when they are backed by such allies. I guess I'll have to progress through more persistence and dedication, while I keep active here.

Please don't feel discouraged about your golf cart metaphor not convincing a hardened skeptic like me. It was very helpful. But as I said, there is a similarity between different teachings that appeal to higher forms of knowledge not commonly available to the masses. I've been following a discussion elsewhere on the sensis divinitatis. This is a special knowledge which some Christians claim which gives them sure knowledge of the divine and the essential truths of Christianity. It is something which I sought for in vain for decades as a Christian.

I go through waves of encouragement/discouragement with the SS stuff. It is hard! Sometimes when the lights go on and I feel like I understand something or make some progress in meditation I float through the days and life seems good. Other times, like now when I've got absolutely no idea about self-similar intuitive states, I feel a bit down in the dumps.

[Cleric K]

Please don't feel discouraged about your golf cart metaphor not convincing a hardened skeptic like me. It was very helpful. But as I said, there is a similarity between different teachings that appeal to higher forms of knowledge not commonly available to the masses. I've been following a discussion elsewhere on the sensis divinitatis. This is a special knowledge which some Christians claim which gives them sure knowledge of the divine and the essential truths of Christianity. It is something which I sought for in vain for decades as a Christian.

I go through waves of encouragement/discouragement with the SS stuff. It is hard! Sometimes when the lights go on and I feel like I understand something or make some progress in meditation I float through the days and life seems good. Other times, like now when I've got absolutely no idea about self-similar intuitive states, I feel a bit down in the dumps.

Hi Anthony,

I see how the self-similar states may have introduced more confusion than anything else. My guess is that things look to you somewhat like this: we look around and see the richness of the sensory spectrum. We look within and perceive thoughts, feelings. If we then take this self-similarity in the superficial way, we begin to imagine that our thoughts should gradually become all the same, all feelings become the same, our perceptions become the same. The result is that we have lost all the incredible richness of our experience and replaced it with patterns of sameness all over. If things are seen in this way, I would be as skeptical as anyone else. I'm not going to enter into the details of the clocks again. Just a hint - that abstractly described metaphor was meant as a pointer towards a Divine state, from whose perspective whole worlds are being Thought. If we grasp that, it's very clear that in our human perspective not only that we're not supposed to become stuck in self-sameness but we must continually go beyond ourselves, to grasp more and more of the world totality. Self-similarity means to find the overarching intuition that can make sense of both your and another being's state. If you want to understand John Smith's ideas you need to find common ground. You only understand him if you are able to think the same ideas. Of course, everyone will experience them from unique perspective but if you don't find a point of overlap then you simply don't understand what he thinks. Then you have your own ideas about what he might be thinking. So you see, in this sense, self-similar doesn't mean spiraling into our own sameness. It means expanding in consciousness such that we can find the same ideas that live in other beings. It's the same topic discussed with Federica. As long as we only think about everything from a third-person perspective, we're only self-similar to ourselves. Everyone else exists only as talking pictures in our perceptions. We grow spiritually when we try to understand the inner experience of other beings. Then our consciousness expands because we need to find a higher vantage point that can see where spiritual perspectives intersect.

I hope you see what this means. If I have to understand the inner life of an alien, I'll have to find the more fundamental level of consciousness from which my human and the alien's forms of consciousness can be seen to have branched. In Darwinian evolution we speak all the time about the common ancestors in the tree of life. From such a branching point we can understand two different species as specializations of one more general. It's similar with the spiritual side of things, except that we speak of the hierarchy of beings. To understand the alien we need to find the level of consciousness that is the 'last common ancestor' for both of us. Only from that vantage point I can understand in the real sense both my perspective and the alien's. Note this - in a way I have found level of consciousness that makes me more self-similar to the alien. Yet this self-similarity from my human perspective leads to tremendous expansion of consciousness because to understand the alien I have to make a first-person ascent into these lofty worlds where I could find the point of intersection. This holds the same even for the most trivial matters. To understand my neighbor I have to ascend in soul life to find our last common ancestor - that is, I have to be able to see my neighbor as my brother. From that perspective I can understand the destiny of my neighbor and why he thinks, feels and acts as he does. If we're not willing to develop interest in the lives of those around us, it's useless to speak of SS because the latter demands precisely such expansion of consciousness that can follow the development of the world from the various levels of common ancestry.

Does this make sense?

[AshvinP]

I go through waves of encouragement/discouragement with the SS stuff. It is hard! Sometimes when the lights go on and I feel like I understand something or make some progress in meditation I float through the days and life seems good. Other times, like now when I've got absolutely no idea about self-similar intuitive states, I feel a bit down in the dumps.

Here is a passage to consider in that respect.

A little reflection will teach you that, on the whole, people are very much given to sampling the two extremes. They swing to and fro between them. Leaving out of account the few who at the present day endeavour to gain clear views on this subject, you will find that the majority of people live very much after a particular pattern. In Central Europe this is often described by saying: There are people in Berlin who eat and drink to excess the entire winter, and then in summer they go to Carlsbad in order to remove the ill-effects produced by months of intemperance, thus going from one extreme to the other. Here you have the weighing of the scale, first to one side and then to the other. This is only a radical case. It is very evident that though the foregoing is extreme, and not universal to any great extent, still the oscillation between enjoyment and deprivation exists everywhere. People themselves ensure that there is excess on one side, and then they get the physicians to prescribe a so-called lowering system of cure, that is, the other extreme, in order that the ill effects may be repaired.

We will find this principle applies to all the polar oscillations experienced from within the 4th convolution of objective sensory-conceptual consciousnses (as distinct from 3rd- Imagination, 2nd - Inspiration, 1st - Intuition). But just think how you may have felt about this last year - assuming we are even conscious of our oscillations (many people are not or only slightly conscious of them), would it ever occur that this proceeds from the archetypal structure of the spiritual worlds in which we are embedded? The very fact that we can discern, "this oscillatory experience is from within the 4th convolution", should give us a sense of great reassurance and inspiration, assuming we have some first-person intuition, even if really dim, of what that delamination-convolution process actually means. That discernment means we are growing our self-reflective image to fit Cosmic intuition - it will allow for greater remembrance and anticipation which smoothes out the rough edges of our image through the incarnational perfecting rhythms, making it a better and better fit for the Whole.

[Federica]

Please don't feel discouraged about your golf cart metaphor not convincing a hardened skeptic like me. It was very helpful. But as I said, there is a similarity between different teachings that appeal to higher forms of knowledge not commonly available to the masses. I've been following a discussion elsewhere on the sensis divinitatis. This is a special knowledge which some Christians claim which gives them sure knowledge of the divine and the essential truths of Christianity. It is something which I sought for in vain for decades as a Christian.

I go through waves of encouragement/discouragement with the SS stuff. It is hard! Sometimes when the lights go on and I feel like I understand something or make some progress in meditation I float through the days and life seems good. Other times, like now when I've got absolutely no idea about self-similar intuitive states, I feel a bit down in the dumps.

No worries, Anthony! Actually I feel the metaphor is yours more than mine. It’s not something I had in stock, you inspired it. Now, I wasn’t good enough at forming it in accordance with the ‘instructions’, but I’m not discouraged, maybe it’s doing something!


But now, while you are reflecting on the true meaning of self-similarity, I was wondering about something else, if you don’t mind sharing. In the post you have described yourself as a Christian, and also a "hardened skeptic", and I wonder if it’s a thinking/speaking habit you have acquired, or do you really and precisely mean it? In which case, how does the skepticism tie in to your interest in sensus divinitatis and spiritual science?


I am raising this question - the labels we assign to ourselves and our pursuits under those labels - because I believe it’s connected to our motivational ups and downs. I don’t know if it’s your case or not, but I believe that the more we are pursuing a special, selected knowledge, that we aspire to access, decipher, and take advantage of, in order to satisfy a predefined quest, the more we are exposed to fluctuations. When things get unclear, or when the inquiry put a strain on our energy, we feel down in the dumps, we reluctantly put our special area of interest on hold, and we go back to our normal life, hoping for a future revival of interest and motivation. Would sensus divinitatis be this type of “special knowledge”, like a distilled body of information isolated and preserved somewhere, that can be pursued to respond to a determined, preexisting quest, like for example 'communion with the divine'? (to be honest, I have no idea, I am really asking).


The point I'm trying to make is, the larger the spectrum of our search for truth, the easier it is to remain motivated, simply because we are immersed in our questions all the time, we are our questions, and there is just nowhere else to go. When we search for the full truth, there is no ‘normal life’ to get back to when things get difficult. Life - our own, as well as life at large - is precisely what we are aspiring to understand, together with the full spectrum of physical and spiritual reality. Then we can’t ask our future takeaways to be such and such, or able to quench our thirst for the divine, or else. We don’t even expect to gain any "special knowledge", or any future takeaways, just because there is nothing to take that knowledge away from and to. It’s the whole thing we are inquiring, which is concentric around us, expanding in, as well as out, to the whole sphere of inner and outer existence, so where could we ever go with any slice of such holistic knowledge?


With this in mind, I was wondering if you were pursuing knowledge as Wholeness, or rather as a special selection of knowledge with a special purpose, or quest, attached. If it’s the latter, I imagine it could be an obstacle to feeling regularly motivated, and to the living experience of Spiritual Science too.