Chief Feature ... an exercise

From a paper journal, dated 131208:

From memory ... not even that.
Features of False Personality

Imaginary I
Many I's
Lack of SR
Internal Considering
Lying
Buffers
Expressing negative emotions
Unnecessary talk (out of control)
Requirements
Identifying
Vanity
Self-will
Lack of self-observation
Out of control imagination

And then, what I missed (forgot)

Sleep
General lying & self-justifying
FORMATORY THINKING
MECHANICAL ROLES
Self-pictures
Negative/useless attitudes
False suffering
Mechanical associations
Mechanical dislikes/opinions
Mechanical annoyances.

Most of what I missed, was just that, failing to bring into memory but once I looked them up, it was obvious - like I know that eventually they would've popped up. They weren't really forgotten. Not so for those two features highlighted in capitals. I experienced a real shock realising I had missed them. I really had forgotten all about these features - to the extent that having them back in memory almost immediately released me from their power, if only temporarily.

And maybe there is something in this. Remember, this exercise came about after a discussion of Chief Feature and being disappointed with myself for having actually forgotten what I once understood. (Although, I read in a work source quite recently that this is known to happen - but that hardly helps!). So maybe I should entertain the idea, because it doesn't seem impossible, that my Chief Feature could be that I get lost in Mechanical Roles.

Update 010209:

His Chief Feature is that he is contradictory. He has to assert the contrary or opposite. I knew it all along!

The Aim:

1. To increase Real Will
2. To increase Consciousness
3. To increase Understanding

I'm putting this here as a simple statement of intent. It doesn't aim to be all and everything but it sets a simple structure to the coming year:

1. Twice daily Prayer.
2. Basic Work: The Seven Day Standard
- Come into a state of SR whilst in the midst of difficult & surprising events x 7 daily
- External Considering* is always conscious: thrice daily
- Record efforts on 5x3 cards & use notebooks, journals, etc, where motivated.
- Rest for 3 days.
- Repeat this 7/3 effort for the rest of 2009.
3. Read Calvin's Institutes (Beveridge trans.) daily following the Princeton Theological Seminary.
4. Swim 2 to 4 times weekly. Reduce strokes-per-length, etc.
5. I have a new instrument to study and learn. Daily.
6. Study work sources, either in short bursts or durations. Have regular 'projects'.
7. Always 'follow the claim of the object', willing things, willing people, willing events, willing the Work.

* Some practical examples of External Considering:

• new thinking
• avoid slander and cheap talk
• avoid making requirements of others
• transform negative thoughts of others into positive thoughts
• see all negativity as a gift
  
• put oneself in another's position
• find in oneself a state corresponding to that found in others - remember that you felt like this once
• discern the other persons needs and try to meet them
• remember that people are asleep, they know not what they do, they are machines
• "In relation to other people, you must not act without thinking. Think first, then act. If this person would prefer you to act in some manner and not another, it is all the same to you, so why not do what he likes?" - O

NOTES

I'm into the 12th day of this year long work effort, and though I do not intend to document a running commentary here, I appear to have succumbed to my need to make some brief note. The first seven days revealed some difficulty in meeting my own quota of three daily efforts to externally consider. That's worth putting on record because I'll be here at the end of 2009 assessing this effort. I also recognise some significant slippage (or perhaps levelling out on a plateau) since the previous work octave ended in Easter 2008. It's a truth: aim prevents drift. And finally, I intend through each successive 7 day period of activity to introduce additional work efforts to those outlined above. Currently I am giving up self-will 10 times daily. But at any rate, I'm circling in on all those features of false personality that never truly go away. (150109)