Post by mattsaturn on Sept 4, 2012 0:51:47 GMT -6
Matt Saturn here, formerly Dude Tyson and a million other stupid names, whatever. I've backed off from posting because I found writing about the path to be an obstacle to actually walking it. Having gone it alone and done the work for a while, I've come across some things maybe worth sharing.
While I acknowledge the probability of the supernatural, and tip my hat to the possibility of all sorts of Flying Spaghetti Monsters, I find one of the most energizing, motivating states of mind to be atheism. Oddly enough this is for pretty 4th Way reasons. One of the goals of 4th Way practice is to create moments in yourself of a “be here now” nature, where you are struck by this “this”-ness of things right in front of you, especially when one of those things is yourself. (One 4th Way title is “Life is only real then, when ‘I Am.’” Without even opening the book I feel I’ve already benefited massively from its name alone.) There is something about the mindset of this is all there is, of thinking there is no godform or mysterious energy web interconnecting everything, which slams you with such intense concreteness and isolation that the centrality of YOUR OWN EFFORTS comes into sharp focus. Contrariwise, I find the “believer” mindset to create cloudiness and indecision in myself. It’s different for everyone I suppose; this is how it seems to play out for me. I've had personal brushes with the Dark Side, my own magick actually working, and inexplicable synchonicities, so I'm not a complete skeptic. But for living my life right, it often seems best to live as if all that doesn't exist.
In similar vein, I find 4th Way thought to be strongest where it overlaps with psychoanalysis and existentialism. In Chapter 6 of The Fourth Way, Ouspensky discusses “buffers.” Freud might have called these “defense mechanisms,” Orwell called it “doublethink,” Sartre called it “bad faith.” They’re basically oversights in your mental network which prevent two different contradictory thoughts from ever touching, basically allowing you to believe bullshit without facing the fact that deep down you know better. More simply, it’s called denial. It’s easy to go overboard second-guessing everything you think or do once you discover denial within yourself, but overcoming denial nonetheless seems pretty central to 4th Way work.
Finally I just want to bring up one other section from Chapter 6 of The Fourth Way. Ouspensky is discussing conscience, and how conscience manifests in amazing moments when you become aware of all your complex feelings towards a subject in one flash. (Interestingly this is a rather amoral view of conscience; Ouspensky doesn’t seem to care that your conscience is selfish or selfless, but simply that it be honest.)
That’s pretty awesome and helpful, but another important part of the discussion to me was this:
“Only you must wait until you get a taste of such a moment, because without a taste of it you will never get any further in understanding what a moment of conscience means.”
For a long time 4th Way work seemed pretty pointless to me despite my efforts. I felt like I was barking up the wrong tree, and that it was all a bunch of self-defeating intellectualism, when the key was to get down to my own heart. However, once I realized I felt this way, moments of strong feelings began coming to me about various things. The 4th Way reading had prepared me to keep watch and sustain my attention on such moments. Finally over time the frequency and intensity increased, to the point of regaining some sense of genuine selfhood that I feel I had lost to over-intellectualizing everything. This, I believe, is the difference between knowing the path and walking it.
While I acknowledge the probability of the supernatural, and tip my hat to the possibility of all sorts of Flying Spaghetti Monsters, I find one of the most energizing, motivating states of mind to be atheism. Oddly enough this is for pretty 4th Way reasons. One of the goals of 4th Way practice is to create moments in yourself of a “be here now” nature, where you are struck by this “this”-ness of things right in front of you, especially when one of those things is yourself. (One 4th Way title is “Life is only real then, when ‘I Am.’” Without even opening the book I feel I’ve already benefited massively from its name alone.) There is something about the mindset of this is all there is, of thinking there is no godform or mysterious energy web interconnecting everything, which slams you with such intense concreteness and isolation that the centrality of YOUR OWN EFFORTS comes into sharp focus. Contrariwise, I find the “believer” mindset to create cloudiness and indecision in myself. It’s different for everyone I suppose; this is how it seems to play out for me. I've had personal brushes with the Dark Side, my own magick actually working, and inexplicable synchonicities, so I'm not a complete skeptic. But for living my life right, it often seems best to live as if all that doesn't exist.
In similar vein, I find 4th Way thought to be strongest where it overlaps with psychoanalysis and existentialism. In Chapter 6 of The Fourth Way, Ouspensky discusses “buffers.” Freud might have called these “defense mechanisms,” Orwell called it “doublethink,” Sartre called it “bad faith.” They’re basically oversights in your mental network which prevent two different contradictory thoughts from ever touching, basically allowing you to believe bullshit without facing the fact that deep down you know better. More simply, it’s called denial. It’s easy to go overboard second-guessing everything you think or do once you discover denial within yourself, but overcoming denial nonetheless seems pretty central to 4th Way work.
Finally I just want to bring up one other section from Chapter 6 of The Fourth Way. Ouspensky is discussing conscience, and how conscience manifests in amazing moments when you become aware of all your complex feelings towards a subject in one flash. (Interestingly this is a rather amoral view of conscience; Ouspensky doesn’t seem to care that your conscience is selfish or selfless, but simply that it be honest.)
That’s pretty awesome and helpful, but another important part of the discussion to me was this:
“Only you must wait until you get a taste of such a moment, because without a taste of it you will never get any further in understanding what a moment of conscience means.”
For a long time 4th Way work seemed pretty pointless to me despite my efforts. I felt like I was barking up the wrong tree, and that it was all a bunch of self-defeating intellectualism, when the key was to get down to my own heart. However, once I realized I felt this way, moments of strong feelings began coming to me about various things. The 4th Way reading had prepared me to keep watch and sustain my attention on such moments. Finally over time the frequency and intensity increased, to the point of regaining some sense of genuine selfhood that I feel I had lost to over-intellectualizing everything. This, I believe, is the difference between knowing the path and walking it.