Just for this afternoon:
1. Self-remember at 1400 throughout (another) dental appointment.
2. Self-remember during visit to relatives.
3. Self-remember writing journal (got some plans to firm up what I want out of the new year).
Notes on those efforts:
I was standing on the doorstep watching the passing traffic, the dreary weather, sensing my presence in the moment, remembering myself whilst waiting for the dentist to open after lunch. After about 5 minutes the door opened and entering the building I began a conversation with my dentist. What happened? I went out like a light. I only realised on my way home the tragedy of another lost moment. Something similar, but less definite occurred whilst visiting my mother. I had some presence but all too fragile and short lived. And then, writing my journal? Well, it would be very convenient, having understood that SR is so much easier when one is alone (or being quiet, playing a passive role, engaging activities such as reading, listening to music, and so forth) to then only place oneself in the midst of such events. It's a danger because that approach is the path of least resistance, it is medieval and monastic. It is suited to certain types but surely no one in the Work. The purpose of engaging this Work is to develop Being in the thick of daily life, and whilst certain events and attitudes will by necessity be lost along the way, just as a matter of course or through deliberation, we must still move with presence in the world. We have our roles to play, we are conscious beings walking the royal way to the heavenly city Sarras. Something is missed and wasted if all we develop is the ability to remain conscious in caves with tomes and private thoughts. We end up like - well, I don't know, but experience teaches that the Knight must walk consciously out of Camelot, the City of Men.
On another note, I cannot state how dangerous and disproportionate to the degree of self-remembering, the backlash has been. What I notice (and I am noting this for the first time), in almost all my past experience the backlash has been an emotional riot from within and as such filled me with fear of what IT might say or do and the consequences of that lack of control. But now I am experiencing the backlash as a General Law type assault where other people, and generally those very close to me, are apparently being used as weapons against me. What I can say for anyone who may be encountering anything similar is this: be grateful for the friction, it's a beautiful thing even if it's a hellish event to undergo. You have contact, so be grateful, it's all for you. Our exile is a state of forgetfulness and these events offer potent moments for self-remembering.
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5 comments:
I have to admit that the weirdness from family (less so from strangers, I can deal with that easier) made me morph into a seemingly more normal person. I.e. not a third state presence. Just the wearing down of all that. Interestingly my parents never reacted to it, but the siblings...pure devils.
I think my point is you can't be afraid to seem different. Even though they will even say you are mentally disordered (or something). It would be the same anywhere too, I think. If you were in a totally strange environment somebody would accuse you of being a child abductor or something. You know what I mean.
So I can see me back 'then' as not being afraid of looking like a strange presence; then seeing me now and how it's different.
Of course I have to say there is more conscious role playing now. More diplomacy from me. There has to be. I didn't develop nothing from it all.
But what I avoid - and shouldn't - is that 'challenge' you get from people (in the General Law sense), when in fact I should stand my ground to that. That is spiritual warfare. It's like 'aura' warfare. They see my aura, I see the black monolith of General Law bearing down with its disapproval and attempt to put fear or 'shame' into me. If I stand my ground admittedly it gets to be a strange situation, but so what. Go about your business. Do what you do...
OK, I have a goal I think is good and practical for 2008:
make a commonplace book of the Bible.
Read the Bible and actually note verses and statements and stories that are in whatever way foundational. Have them written down. Maybe categorize as I go along.
This is getting the Bible in a real way, and being able to remember it in a practical way.
I remember it from all my complete readings when I have to remember it, but to be able to have it all in a more systematic way. Yet a simple way.
The goal to become 'mighty in the word' is a real, and big, goal.
I want to repeat: when I get into debate on Christian subjects the Word of God comes to me, and I have it at a deep level from the complete - and other - readings, but the effort to go through it and find all the stories, passages, saying, commandments, etc, will pay off as well.
There are simple things that are foundational that you have to focus on and remember.
Gail Riplinger impresses me in this sense. Someone asks her "Why, why do we have to have an exact translation" etc., etc. And she searches her mind, and says, "The Bible says my word is truth." etc, etc. She quotes the exact verse.
There is a real power in knowing the Word at that depth where it pours back out to fill the void. My aim of three complete readings is done. Excepting dipping in for samples it's been a hiatus this year, though I felt the absence. As a redress, I intend to follow this thorough and whole reading plan through 2008, (I've looked at it a few times this year and you brought it to my attention more recently, so): http://hippocampusextensions.com/mcheyneplan.html
Though I feel a little envy for your brilliant idea of a 'commonplace' and may try something similar myself. It's an activity for a lifetime, it's creating an extension, a thread into the world, I like that.
In my writings on that Greenbaggins site I had used a Goethe quote that I've always had in memory:
'Most people wouldn't know the devil if he had them by the throat.'
It reminded me of how you can have lines like that stay with you, and how there are - even if just a handful that are useful for you - verses like that, obviously, in the Bible.
A person challenged my Goethe quote and asked for a citation, saying he was "sceptical." I didn't have to do the footwork because another person found it in Faust, a line spoken by Mephstopheles.
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