For calumet

dobro p · Nov 11, 2004

"Calumet's looking for a mutually beneficial life partnership and wants to know what she should be looking for in her search. First question: what does she need to know in terms of a useful approach?"

1.1

This suggests it's too soon to start looking. Let that dragon stay where it is for the time being.

"Second question: what does Calumet need to beware of in her search for a mutually beneficial life partnership?"

Hex 18

Hex 18 talks about seeing what's wrong and disordered about the antecedents and causes of a situation, which entails the letting go or changing of what's wrong. It's like the self-analysis Horney talks about. It's really positive, but it takes work and it takes time.

Put 1.1 and 18 together, and the message seems to be: "As for a mutually beneficial life partnership for you: not yet. You have to do some work on yourself first."

Let's say that's useful advice. Okay, what are the feelings and forces in you that don't want to wait? Can you deal with them?

Hope this is useful.

calumet · Nov 11, 2004

1.1 is excellent advice. Of course, it changes to 44, which I take to mean that during all of this creative delay and vigorous exercise of the advice in 18, temptations will abound. So yes, definitely 1.1; 18 if I must in order to fix a few tiny little imperfections; and to hell with 44. If I can see it coming in time to let it barrel straight on through to the devil without sweeping me along with it.

Thanks, Dobro. I very much appreciate your comments and your thoughtfulness. But there's one more thing you can do for me--explain how on earth you got from psychoanalysis to religion, per the sub-thread in "Very Sad."

dobro p · Nov 11, 2004

It was a spin-off from an idea in the introduction to Horney's book. Every once in a while when I'm reading something, a phrase or sentence will just jump off the page at me, and that was one of those times - the part where she says something like 'as many people as possible should undertake the path of increasing self-awareness'. She says it in the context of living up to the ideals of democracy. Well, it just suddenly struck me as unrealistic to expect or even hope that everybody's gonna tread the path of self-awareness. I'm a believer in political democracy and the rule of law, but the older I get, the more it seems to me that not only are people different, but that some people are way more developed than others, and that at some point - like with enlightened beings - there's a difference that's so significant that you can't really usefully or accurately talk about equality. So far so good, but it also occurred to me that there's probably a law that governs percentages of the population who can reach enlightenment in any one period (in the same way that there's a law that produces a rough balance of male and female babies in a population, in the same way that there's a natural law that produces a certain number of geniuses in a culture, and so on). Which means that, if you take the Horney book seriously and put it into practice, that you're part of a pretty select group - most people would rather be watching TV than going through the trouble of finding out what makes them tick. And I was wondering what people thought of this idea - that there's only a certain percentage of any population that are gonna be drawn to self-exploration, and an even smaller number who ascend to levels of being that I described earlier.

prynne · Nov 11, 2004

"Yes there is hierarchy, and I am Empress, Supreme Being, Everything."

calumet · Nov 11, 2004

Ah, OK. Your use of the term hierarchy confused me. I associate the word with competition, where people are constantly jostling and elbowing and clawing their way to the very few top positions. I got hung up on all sorts of side notions, such as schools of psychotherapy like Freud's Vienna gang, where there is a rigid pecking order and where psychoanalysis is treated as a religion. Or like some (most?) religions, which are used by political or other groups of power players to establish and enforce a pecking order.

I would agree that enlightenment, however conceived, isn't going to be attempted by many. With apologies to Buddhists et al I doubt it's actually achieved by anyone. We all have a point beyond which we cannot or will not go. So I think it's a journey and not a destination (dammit). Theoretically the road is infinitely wide, but as you go farther along, you notice that the road really is less traveled. You could be right that productive navel-gazing occurs among some statistically predictible percentage of the population, like red hair or blue eyes; or it could be that people simply would rather distract themselves from the mess inside than do anything about it; or maybe "inability/unwillingness to develop" and "preference for distraction from scarey inside stuff" are the same thing.

tashij · Nov 11, 2004

Ummmm, the idea of an heir-archy, ? With knowledge being handed down? To those who can recieve? Rather than elbowing and jostling up the ladder? Receptivity might require tending to the 'scarey stuff inside' and stepping a half step off from it's grinding forward motion.....?

dobro p · Nov 11, 2004

I'm not thinking of an administered hierarchy with positions being intentionally maintained and formal transmissions taking place, although I can see where that might be a possibility. I'm thinking of a natural hierarchy created by natural laws, in which there will be fewer and fewer individuals as you go higher and higher up the scale of spiritual growth.

bradford_h · Nov 11, 2004

Dobro-
An important distinction to make

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
-Thomas Jefferson

http://www.greatbooks.org/library/selections/jefferson.shtml

In fact I think this is one of the most important themes in the Yi - the cultivation of merit, de facto nobility and noblesse oblige in the Young Noble (Junzi, the term wrongly translated as Superior Man)

martin · Nov 11, 2004

I must say that as I grow older I see less and less differences between people with respect to inner development. Some are consciously on a path of inner exploration, others are not. But it doesn't seem to matter that much. Every human being has this golden spark inside and that spark develops.
It's perhaps a natural and unavoidable process that doesn't really need the attention of the surface personality. That spark will sooner or later set the whole being ablaze, quite independent of what the surface personality thinks about the meaning and purpose of life.

bradford_h · Nov 11, 2004

"The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men.
Ordinary people see no difference between men."
Pascal

I personally am extremly grateful to know so many of my spiritual superiors.
I have much less use for my equals,
and no use at all for someone just like me.

martin · Nov 12, 2004

Don't we all have this originality? Even someone just like you?

There is a kind of paradox in this. The more ordinary I feel, the more I feel that I'm like everyone else, the more I see how special and unique everyone is.
Don't know how to put it, my English is even further below average than usual today

.
I hope you know what I mean.

dobro p · Nov 12, 2004

"Some are consciously on a path of inner exploration, others are not. But it doesn't seem to matter that much. Every human being has this golden spark inside and that spark develops."

My understanding is that it matters very much. Every human being has that spark, yes, but it's the ones who go looking for the spark who help themselves and others most. The others are only automatic. Jung thought the same. So did Gurdjieff. So did the Buddha. So did Thomas Jefferson apparently.

martin · Nov 12, 2004

I wouldn't say that there are no differences at all, Dobro. But I don't see a sharp dividing line anymore between those who are 'on the path' and those who are not.
Many people lead a quality life and know nothing about these things. Even Gurdjieff, who liked to polarize things (for didactic purposes?) acknowledged that when he talked about the 'good obyvatel'.

Google, Google ...

Found this page
The part about obyvatels is near the end of the page, but the rest is also interesting.

I love this guy, although he was really a pain in the *ss and I would probably stay away from him as far as possible if he was still alive.

dobro p · Nov 12, 2004

Well, it isn't really the 'people on the path' that I'm focussing on here. It's the distribution and the numbers of the whole human species bottom to top in terms of what the books like to call spiritual evolution. There are a lot of people 'on the path' but not many make it anywhere near the top. (Many are called but few are chosen.) Kinda like the pop music scene. But just like the pop music scene, the closer you get to the top, the fewer people there are. Like heavyweight boxing. Like a Christmas tree. Like anything. Any given population seems to taper to a point at the top. And the difference between the top and middle is huge. Ditto the difference between the middle and the bottom. And as for the difference between the top and the bottom, it might almost be a difference of species.

I think Gurdjieff dealt a certain amount of snake oil in his time. But would you have bought your snake oil from anybody else? lol

martin · Nov 12, 2004

From him certainly not! He once painted ordinary birds and sold them as parrots or something like that. He had to run when it started to rain and the paint came off. Lol.

tashij · Nov 12, 2004

It reminds me Dobro, of what it takes in athletics to reach championship level: the few centemeters of difference means a world of training, endurance and just plain talent ...or...as the Tibetans might say...luck.

martin · Nov 12, 2004

About the enlightened Christmas tree, I guess that most of us are not here to make it to the top. At least not here. We try to do what we planned to do here and then move on to other worlds. Some are maybe here because they want to develop patience or willpower for instance - a world like this where you mostly don't get what you want even if you need it (ha!) is very well suited for this purpose.
Others are perhaps here because they have a appointment with someone else. I will meet you 29 February 2007 in Amsterdam. Things like that. There are many many possibilities.

Even with such limited purposes success is not always guaranteed of course. That appointment, for example, is basically flawed because 29 February 2007 doesn't exist.

dobro p · Nov 12, 2004

Pity. I like Amsterdam.

jte · Nov 13, 2004

"But just like the pop music scene, the closer you get to the top, the fewer people there are. Like heavyweight boxing. Like a Christmas tree. Like anything. Any given population seems to taper to a point at the top. "

Tilt the Christmas tree horizontally... might it not simply be the normal (bell curve) distribution of statistics fame, rather than some "limit" imposed from the outside?

So perhaps the normal curve applies in spiritual growth, too. Just a thought...

- Jeff

dobro p · Nov 13, 2004

I think the 'limit' is inherent. I think things are informed from within themselves by what they are at a deeper, more subtle level. Whether you think that inner source that informs what you are is 'you' or something other than 'you', it makes no difference to me. The important thing is to get in touch with it.

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