Individuality

[Nick_A]

I was thinking about this excerpt from Thomas' post on the "quarrel" thread.

I phrased it like that on intention. It sounds a bit provocative and irrational. Let’s look at this. When I said that they are polluting my planet and killing my friends, I am using the language of the ego. The ego always identifies with something and rejects something else. That’s the basic function of the ego – separation. When the ego speaks, it is always about my property, my country, my ideas, as opposed to their property, their country, their ideas, and so on. The content of this thought separation finely delineates the later conflict. Conflict arises when the ego feels mine is threatened by them.

This raises the interesting question of how we should appreciate our individuality. This individuality is associated with our ego. For this reason it is often frowned upon in modern spiritual thought. The ego implies a separation that is either seen as non-existent or at best repulsive.

But, on the other hand, many ancient traditions speak in one way or another of "I Am". The greatest thing for a person to achieve is "I Am". Yet, for there to be an "I Am" there must be a separation and individuality.

The ego must discriminate but is it by definition a bad thing? To be or not to be is really a serious question.

Exd 3: 14

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

If evolved man is made in the image of God, "I am" would have to be a part of it.

The Devil also says "I Am" which caused him a lot of trouble.

So how can I realistically consider separation? Is individuality or "I am" the goal of human evolution or what must be abandoned. Perhaps one level of "I am" must be sacrificed in pursuit of another or maybe any form of "I am" is purely illusion.

How do you regard individuality? Does it exist in reality or is it just imagination? If we are incapable of "I Am", does that mean we are incapable of it but something that should be considered the matured seed of man?

Perhaps what we call our ego is just a corruption of what should be our ability to discriminate consciously, to discriminate in quality in a more objective sense. Our perception of quality could be just habitual reaction lacking any form of conscious inner verification. Maybe the healthy ego would discriminate in a natural healthy way that the corrupt ego reflecting hypnotic sleep is incapable of. But the sad thing is that without some degree of awakening we could not have the slightest understanding of what this means.

Perhaps individuality isn't the problem but our perception of it distorts everything.

So, should we strive for individuality or strive to abandon it. Maybe we have to do both but isn't that just a contradiction?

[Corri]

Nick, love......

So, should we strive for individuality or strive to abandon it. Maybe we have to do both but isn't that just a contradiction?

Should? Strive? We? Have to? Just for shiits and giggles, drop those words from your vocabulary... throw in 'need' while you are at it, and see if you can make it through a day without them. What's that day like?

Contradiction. Love that word. Now that is something to ponder.

Corri

[Nick_A]

Corri

Should? Strive? We? Have to? Just for shiits and giggles, drop those words from your vocabulary... throw in 'need' while you are at it, and see if you can make it through a day without them. What's that day like?

Probably the main difference between Man and the higher mammals is our need for and ability to contemplate the nature of our being and purpose of our existence. Without this contemplation we are like white sheep. The "black sheep" is created through contemplation much to the annoyance of white sheep and shepherds. It is therefore despised by many and admired by a relative few.

Unfortunately real contemplation is no longer an aspect of the thinking process for a great many from lack of practice. It has been replaced by the gradual tendency to copy and as a result, begin thinking like experts with the encouragement of white sheep and shepherds alike.

I'm not sure of the author but I appreciate the observation

Pondering is answering questions from essence and answering them practically.
Pondering is a self-interrogation which consists in stripping off all the answers of association until you finally come to your own essential answer.
One-half the energy of a human being must be spent internally pondering.
One-third of one's time should be spent in pondering.

So when you ask what the day would be like, I say it would be a great day for a white sheep.

If there ever is a survey done on the ten most universally hated mechanical devices of all time, it would most likely include everything falling under the category of "alarm clock." :P

[Thomas Knierim]

Nick: But, on the other hand, many ancient traditions speak in one way or another of "I Am". The greatest thing for a person to achieve is "I Am". Yet, for there to be an "I Am" there must be a separation and individuality.

The "I am" mode is non-conceptual; it is pure being. Ordinarily we are not in this state. It exists only briefly, typically when we are overwhelmed by life. For example, the non-conceptual mode of consciousness exists when we are confronted with extraordinary beauty, or with extraordinary ugliness, or with great danger, or great pleasure. It literally "blows" our mind. This mode exists apart from thought. There are a number of techniques, such as meditation or prayer, which aim to induce and sustain this state. During this state, the ego is absent. Therefore there is no separation and individuality.

Individuality and separation come into the equation when the mind starts spinning thoughts and concepts around what is perceived. This means that "I am" changes into "I am this" or "I am that". It happens by identification. There is thought and thought creates the thinker. Then the thinker is identified with this or that thought. This is the ordinary state of the mind. We find ourselves in this mode of consciousness during most of the waking state. This is not the "I am" mode, but the "I am that" mode.

Corri: Should? Strive? We? Have to? Just for shiits and giggles, drop those words from your vocabulary... throw in 'need' while you are at it, and see if you can make it through a day without them. What's that day like?

Good point. Most of the little frustrations we experience during the course of the day arise from the perceived disharmony between is and ought. This happens as a result of conceptualizing. The mind creates an (imagined) counter reality based upon our expectations. If our expectations are not met, there is resistance. This energy then builds up and becomes anger, frustration, verbal protest, and action. Probably we could spare ourselves much frustration by cutting this process off at the base. Cutting it off at the base means developing an attitude of acceptance (which is traditionally called grace). Developing such an attitude takes time; it is no easy, but neither is it impossible.

On the other hand, there are practical necessities in everyone's life. We need to get up and got to work. We need to eat and drink. We need to feed the baby, drive the kids to school and so on. These are external circumstances for which the mind provides the means of deciding, acting, and controlling. The trick is not to make external necessities into internal duress. If we feel coerced to do this or that, then this is a sign that aversion has arisen and that there is something wrong with our internal "processing".

Cheers, Thomas

[Nick_A]

Hi Thomas

The "I am" mode is non-conceptual; it is pure being

I understand it as a level of consciousness that may or may not be an aspect of higher being. I see "being" as a relative scale and this state of being which. A person experiencing this level of consciousness accidentally is not of the same level of being of the one who consciously maintains it. Our scattered nature does not allow for it while our unified nature would.

Therefore there is no separation and individuality.

Interesting that I understand it oppositely. Our normal life lacks any of this self awareness that indicates "I Am" so we have the illusion of separation. "We" do not exist during these normal times so there is no real seaparation or individuality. However during extended self awareness or the conscious creation of an inner unity, there is a connection to the level where real "I" can appear. This is a unique individuality and exists not only in conjunction with the higher but as a unique something with the ability to separate from the artificially acquired.

In this higher state you've described we are part of everything but also with the ability to "do" natural for coming "to be". In our normal states, we are yet "to be" so we cannot "do". In this way we lack any individuality other than in appearance.

Our natural mistake is in the belief that as we are, we can comprehend what it means "to be". We must sacrifice our conceptions for the sake of coming into being. It takes a great deal of impartial efforts just to avoid exchanging one conception for another.

It seems that what you describe as individuality, I define as blind unconscious mechanicality void of any real human individuality. What you describe as pure being, I see as source of true human individuality which would be the creation of the soul and the reflection of "I Am" within the scale of "being" itself.

From Meister Eckhart:

As the soul becomes more pure and bare and poor,
and possesses less of created things,
and is emptied of all things that are not God,
it receives God more purely, and is more completely in Him;
and it truly becomes one with God,
and it looks into God and God into it, face to face as it were;
two images transformed into one.
Some simple folk think that they will see God
as if* He were standing there and they here.
It is not so.* God and I, we are one.

This refers to the soul, our unique "I" which I believe is our potential.

[Nick_A]

Individuality IMO is so misunderstood. Especially with the youth, it seems that individuality is perceived only in relations to personal desires. In this way, deprived of context, individuality is no longer human but objectively becomes just a "thing'. Yet, from a "bigview" perspective, I've come to believe more and more that true human individuality has to be seen in relations to the higher cosmic higher realities "above' our being and the mechanics of natural life that are bound to the earth. Consider the following from an old 1973 book by John Bennett: "Gurdjieff: Making a New World". P.183-85

......................Modern science is in this very same situation. it is in the process of discovering how the universe works but does not even think to ask what it is for. If the universe is too large a machine for us to think of as a whole, we have the solar system or even the space-ship earth to study. Who asks the question: :What is this remarkable piece of mechanism for?" Man is another marvelously constructed machine closer to us than any other machine. Do we ask ourselves, "What purpose does this ingenious apparatus serve?"

Individuals and societies, scientific and non-scientific, are trying to pierce the veil that hides the future. it is obvious to all that mankind is in a serious crisis and even some doubt if we can survive. In all these studies, we can find scarcely anywhere recognition that the first question to ask is whether or not the existence of this earth and of mankind with it serves any useful purpose. this is strange because we are constantly asking this question about subordinate entities such as human organizations, activities, and constructions. Indeed we congratulate ourselves upon our utilitarian attitude and are ready to sweep away and obliterate whatever serves no useful purpose; and we are proud of man's ability to turn natural resources to useful account.

Life on earth is a highly improbable state of affairs. it is a mechanism so ingenious in its capacity, not only to maintain its very own existence but to evolve to more complex and improbable states, that it really is astonishing that no one else asks what purpose it serves.

If Gurdjieff had done no more than direct our attention to the question, he would have been entitled to a special place among the pioneers of human thought. As we have seen in the earlier chapters, the question arose in his mind in his early youth and became the 'idée fixe of his inner world: "What is the sense and significance of life on earth in general and human life in particular?"

This should be a natural question, but when we ask why it does not occur to every thinking person, we penetrate to the depth of our human situation. We are so much concerned with our subjective problems that we do not stop to ask ourselves the objective question: "What do I exist for?" For more than two thousand years philosophers have been trying to answer such questions as "What is reality and how do we know it?" They put aside the question "Who made it and why?", either taking it to be unanswerable or handing it over to the theologians to make good the deficiencies of knowledge by revelation and faith.

Theologians agree that the first part of the answer has been revealed: life on earth and man himself have been created by God. The second part, Why? , is put aside as inscrutable. A skeptic might echo the words of Anatole France: 'If God did it, he committed an act of supreme imprudence'. The comment seems even more relevant today than it was eighty years ago, Those outside the religious tradition and especially those who doubt or deny the existence of god, are left without an answer and generally are satisfied to reject questions of origin and purpose as meaningless. It is accepted that the purpose of creation must be tied to the existence of a creator, God and Purpose seem to stand and fall together; yet, if God needs nothing, he cannot be said to have purposes either. There is something deeply unsatisfying here. If we turn to the Eastern religions and philosophies, we find that they pay little attention to purposes and so do not think it necessary to account for anything whatever.

Buddhism, in all its forms rejects such questions as futile and insists that the aim of existence is man's own need to escape from duhkha, which does not mean suffering so much as the conditioned state of incarnated self. the one significant exception is the old religion of Zarathustra, which taught that both life on earth and man endowed with intelligence were created to be allies for the good spirit Ahura Mazda in the struggle with the powers of darkness. The Avestan hymns are full of such references to the role of man as a helper in the cosmic process. for example, Yasna 30.9 has the invocation: "May we belong to those who renew the world and make it to progress!" I have given many reasons for believing that Gurdjieff found that the Zoroastrian tradition lived in Central Asia long after it ceased to be a state religion. for some reason this important myth was forgotten and for a very long time the question 'why does life exist on earth? was lost to view.

Since the seventeenth century, European thinking has been occupied more and more with nature and less and less with the supernatural. When it began to be seen that nature is governed by laws that man can discover and turn to his own purposes the pursuit of knowledge and power become an obsession. the question 'what is it all for? ' seemed to be answered very simply. "It is all for man and for his satisfaction." The very word purpose has come to mean human purpose directed towards human ends..........

As Ironic as it may appear, true individuality is not wanted. The fundamentalists would think it heresy, education would find it too removed from the curriculum, politics would find it harmful since it would take people's interests from politics, New Age thought would find it lacking in "love', and on it goes. The only one that can profit from it is YOU as an individual. And strangely enough, I also believe that so much of the future of mankind will be determined by the efforts of real individuals having discovered human "purpose" while being frowned upon from so many sides. Without their efforts to remain above the pettiness and temptations of escapism in order to experience existence within a universal perspective, we may be in serious trouble.

I have the greatest admiration for those like Ouspensky for example who as brilliant as he was, knew there was more and recorded his findings from the results of serious efforts in his extraordinary book "In Search of the Miraculous". I am in awe that someone could actually write with so much depth and clarity.

So in honor of those true "individuals" sometimes known as authentic "black sheep", I propose a toast of gratitude for their inspiration for me.

[Nick_A]

It is compleely ridiculous, not to mention insulting, what a sophisticated thinker with credentials has to deal with. Consider:

"People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." -- Albert Einstein

Obvious lack of education. How can anyone link Einstein and Schwarzenegger together. No class.

Well at least we know as the open minded educated minority that unlike these other clods, we have the power to be reasonable. Now what? Oh no! not another insult:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

That's the last straw. The only thing worse would be if someone is discovered to have said something like "Let the dead bury their dead" implying that from a human perspective the whole thing is a mad-house in which nothing truly meaningful can be found but can only serve as a means to an end. Such an outlook could only reflect a complete lack of acceptable credentials.

They just do not appreciate the importance of dignity derived from self importance. Probably the result of something in the water over the course of years.

[rich]

:D Dear Nick, Thomas, and Corri,

Please excuse me for trying to interject a little humor in this thread. But, to quote a comic strip character by the name of Popeye:

"I AM WHAT I AM, AND THAT'S ALL THAT I AM, I'M POPEYE THE SAILOR MAN." :knockout: :rofl:

[venom mama]

i think, therefore i am...........vegetarian.