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)

The Gospel of Satan

By chance I stumbled upon this article. I may not have bothered to read it under such circumstances but the author being not unfamiliar I began the first paragraph. I don't have any commentary to append except perhaps to say writing of this quality leaves us all exposed and we would do well to heed those final words to examine ourselves, to measure ourselves by the Word of God.

As a side note, given the insight I touched upon here regarding the Book of Proverbs, and C's insight on Proverbs serving as a handbook for the Spiritual Quest it may be of relevance that of all the books of Scripture it was this same book which first penetrated Pink's heart.

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. - Proverbs 14:12

Transform the Unmanifest

We want to place a point of consciousness at the tip of a particular activity or event. We want to transform something, at least one thing each day. We want to create energy of consciousness, preserve something rather than lose it in the ceaseless passing momentariness of the day. It doesn't matter what the event is - sailing a skiff, ironing your night shirts, milking an anglo-nubian, ploughing the legumes, cooking plantain ... for breakfast. Or something entirely different. We want to give what we have - our time - in conscious service to the Glory of God. We need to do this much to stand still.

But here's something to think about. While we aim to put consciousness into events, and recurrent trivial events at that, there are yet greater glories to uphold. Certain things are not meant to enter into manifestation - there are things that need not come down at all. The Work has always been something we experience in the flow of life. It picks us up in the commotion of daily living, long recognised as the best place to experience and thus find valuation for the Work. Amidst this daily agitation, we quickly come to understand that our point of contact is often already too late to effect much transformation. We are left developing a passive Observing I. No bad thing in itself but only an early day motion. Even in the heat of more direct efforts and planned programs, we are too often found bloodied, conquered by forces beyond our previous imagining. It is obvious to say it, we need to work in the unmanifest. If it sounds at all doubtful then observe something simple, a coarse event: the presence of negative emotions in daily life. So commonplace is this infectious fever - it's nearly invisible - we can say, almost confidently, by the time we are adults the majority of our emotional tagging of events will be negative. Our neuro-emotional networks are riddled with dark cancerous markers just waiting to release the next wave of negative energy into the world. The most trivial things are tagged to release this poison. It takes very little for most of us to throw out our dummies, those that don't see this have not yet experienced their personal limitations. We're such very delicate, self-important things. And none of this even touches on the influence of giant sinkhole events such as 9/11 or the current meltdown of the worlds financial institutions.

We are surrounded by people, they are everywhere and they are all making demands of us. When they are not making demands we find ourselves wrestling with ideas or monologues triggered either by the memory of other people or else in some other manner related back to our musings on our relationships with others, be that real or imagined, physically familial or as tenuous as connecting with a long dead author. And if any of that abates for a moment, life-events fill the vacuum, some crisis occurs. Or else we are overwhelmed with loneliness, boredom, a sense of inadequacy, lack of recognition for our personal genius or what ever other emotional stupidity is having the better of us. It is a world full of negative emotions swirling in a dynamic melange of human interplay. All of this negativity is first established in the unmanifest. By giving expression to our negative emotions we give 'it' manifest form to breathe and prosper. Once it's out there it runs amok - and that is the level at which daily life conducts itself.

And then we have the Work. We may practise placing consciousness in Dance Movements or the Art of Pancake Flipping but recognise that these efforts simply cock the hammer, the energy of consciousness that we so struggle to contain is what ignites the powder and drives out the leaden force of negative emotion. If we sit and wait, we get what comes. It's very simple. Never forget and work actively to transform the unmanifest. Not because we can or ultimately that we need to - after all, the fields are full of Angus, Guernsey and Charolais and the grass is usually green - but because it is the will of God. And because it is an expression of our Service that we seek to cleanse ourselves.

Dead Tomes

It has been a while now since I last read Homer, though he's often close in mind, and this without intentional effort. I'm always considering another reading of Homer. With Homer, as with the Holy Bible and a few other key works, distance and time between readings only further increases some natural arising within my soul that draws me inward and closer towards the essence of what these works embody. I can of course reach a point in my daily wanderings where I might admit to having lost all connection. There's no truth in that but there is an animal within that when dominant allows that kind of language to float through. The truth is these works soar down in the quietest of moments tearing from the heart the impurities and sullied accruals of daily living. I am drawn to the magisterial beauty of works that have a power to purify - it may be fleeting, and short lived in real time, it may even be imagined - we can allow that, it makes no difference. Always there is this cleansing aspect, this power-to-order that identifies them as more than books, wholly rare influences and unique. If, like Johnson you will agree books are mortal like men, these books are the Immortals. And yet, there are those who simply do not have a clue ... and there is no good reason, as I can see, for such rank idiocy. I recently came across Alessandro Baricco's translation of The Iliad. As Homerica goes I've never heard of him. I know nothing more of his achievements. What strikes me as shocking in Baricco's effort to rewrite Homer is that he has ditched the essence of Homer - the inhabitants of Olympus, the very representations of a divine society - and, doing so, created an obsequie for a society deranged with vanity and self-will. Not only is our media riddled with worms who crawl around on their bellies, jaws a-clatter declaring God to be an imaginary figure of our primitive minds, but there are hick scholars the equivalent of delinquent teenagers quite unable to value the treasures they hold. Satisfied that God has been erased from the conscience of man, even it would seem the pagan Gods, and in essence all forms of higher influence, so now it must be stripped from the literature. What hollow glories are these? Hectors religious solemnity suddenly means nothing, has no bearing or value, his whole relationship with Helen undermined. He may just as well make that wine-offering to Zeus with the blood dripping from his hands. Who cares? How are we to understand Achilles knowledge of death, his self-belief and confidence? And what value Apollo's warnings or Zeus' promises? How can we understand the sadness of Helen's great beauty without understanding her cursed fate as a victim of Aphrodite? Nor that her longing for death and deliverance are matched only by the grip of a goddess too strong for her to do anything but yield. It isn't just that a translation of this sort considerably alters the surface texture but that it bleeds the essence of the work, makes slaves of unwary readers and tells an artificial story, a lie - a real Trojan horse. Perhaps the essence of tragedy is retained but what a tragedy that there should be no Athene.

Plutarchian Puzzles (there are several)

After a week with Plutarch I'm right back where I was whenever it was I was last reading him. His writing is dense and demands some concentration not to miss a detail from which the next several pages will unfold and still, at the end of reading a dozen pages or less, if asked, I probably couldn't recall what I'd just read. Not very clearly anyway. Is that because of the translation? Is it me? What? Such strange and perfectly normal writing. Puzzle.

Goldberg Variations

In a state of self-remembering listen to the following recording seven times. No start or end dates, but seven complete attentive sessions. Date and times to be noted below.

JS Bach:
Goldberg Variations (BWV 988)
József Eötvös (Guitar)

This recording is beautiful, elegant and controlled and just short of 63 minutes. I forget that this is a solo guitar, the music transcends the instrument through a fluid of unity that is rare. That may be Bach's design but Eötvös has captured and produced something superior amongst such recordings. Unfortunately it is only available from the artist, (and even then his website is broken and you will have to email him):

Jözsef Eötvös

Anyhow, this 10 minute You Tube video is an excellent taster, (if the audio is sub par):

Aria & Variations 1 - 6

The Listenings:

1. 13/01/08 @ 2350
   
2. 14/01/08 @ 1633
3. 16/01/08 @ 2303
4. 17/01/08 @ 1738
5. 20/01/08 @ 0202
6. 22/01/08 @ 1048
7. 27/01/08 @ 11 20

Notes
This work is over 60 minutes duration. That presented difficulties - just finding the time for starters. I had several false starts where I was interrupted by others - especially with the 7th listening. Another issue was that I'd be so tired after work that just sitting down and making an effort to soak up some B Influence would put me to sleep, proper 1st state sleep. So again, timing each listening is important. On the other hand, just because I say I'm going to listen to a CD recording of Bach's Variations shouldn't mean it's plain sailing easy efforts. It shouldn't surprise that this effort took effort to complete. My admiration for József Eötvös still stands, even those extraordinary delicate thin 'weak' lines in the upper register of the instrument manage to hold and contain, nothing is lost. Eötvös' playing has to be described as impeccable.