Spiritual Portal

Have you noticed that getting into places is not always as easy as getting out? Have you noticed that getting involved with someone is not as easy as letting go? Have you noticed that getting in debt is not as easy as getting out? Have you noticed that getting in trouble is not as easy as getting out. Have you noticed that gaining weight is not as easy as loosing it? Have you ever noticed that getting into an accident is not as easy as getting out of one? So what have we to learn from all this?

One has to learn one thing, Steve, which is that you can't go backward ever. If you spend your life getting out of things, you are done for. Your mind is in a chinese finger trap. What is done is done. Life is already here, in all its fullness. We have to live each moment with the fullness of our entire being and not partially, split-minded. The past can't be made up for. The future may never come, you may never get out. The next moment is not insured. One mind in the past, one mind in the future - that is how we miss life.

"We've got to get in to get out" --Genesis, The Carpet Crawlers

Amen!

Have you noticed that some people have to be rite? It is almost like they need to feel that they are important by being rite. I met someone today like that and told them that they were rite about everything and then asked them if that made them feel good. They said "no but it makes you feel bad." I didn't want to them them how good i felt being so beyond that whole mind game.

It's funny, once you "let someone be right" about whatever they want to "let you know" they are right about, they open up, even if just a little usually.  I think these people often have been the victims of verbal and emotional abuse, probably while growing up, and have a feeling to "feel right" when in conversation quite often, because of this deep seated insecurity stemming from the past.  Once you let them know you heard and understand their perspective, usually, they become more open, though sometimes you have to sit through a lot of negative emotional release on their part to get there.  I just experienced this in a conversation with a friend I hadn't talk to in 2 months.  I just kept telling him "I heard and understood what you said", and eventually he opened up, the energy of the conversation changed from his aggression and frustration, to more reflective and open and honest.


As per the your original questions Steve... yes and yes and yes and yes  :)

I seem to always find just "being present" and "letting go" to be my solution to these "traps" and 9 times out of 10, the trap itself disappears once I view it from a different perspective, which only ever happens if I am "being present" and able to "let go" of useful emotion and thought patterns.

Gurdjieff said it is not important to try to figure out what is the wrong or right thing to do, because this leaves us in the intellectual sphere which is incomplete and subject to mass hypnosis among other sneaky influences.  He said all anyone needs to do to live a better life is to "wake up", because if you are awake you will do the sensible thing, if you're asleep, you will be following "dream logic" in waking life...  Mr. Magoo style...

This post is gold.

i suppose it is all in how you look at it: useful or non-useful emotion. We often have to look at solutions by getting a different perspective. To see the larger picture so to speak. Perhaps that is why the practice of meditation is so important. Suddenly we may get the epiphany needed to act.

Yes.

Meditation lately has helped me a lot in this way.  I've also felt these benefits of "clearer thought" from other activities such as: a healthier diet, yoga and exercise in general, volunteering to help others (one way Neem Kaorli Baba said we can gain energy, to serve and feed others).


I made a typo, i mean "unuseful emotions", but your point Steve is true either way.  I agree, meditation is a powerful method to allow an epiphany to arrive.

Have you noticed that those around us may have a bad self-image or a bad concept of self?  Perhaps we have a bad concept of ourselves. Just something i throw out there because I believe it happens to us all sometime in life. Perhaps it even happens so we may understand how others feel.... to empathize.

some thing wonderful is about to happen

There is the "no-self image". You realize that self-images, good and bad, are thought pictures passing across the screen of the mind. They are separate from your being.

I am referring to people who leave the spiritual path and return to old living patterens. They even leave their spiritual friends. In the initial stages it seems to me that we model our self image with those we would like to become like. Though I have seen many close friends return to a 'safe' life surrounded by familiar people and objects and forfeit their spiritual friends and the steps where they have spiritually moved forward. They return to what they see as security. Even though they really have sabotaged their spiritual progress. This is something i have observed quite frequently in my life.

At the same time I see other people who have entered my life taking the place of others who have left. It is an interesting phenomena that many of us are witness to. It is interesting to me that i had to do very little. These type of people leave our lives because of their own mindsets that they have not let go. It often leaves me wondering just how much our mindsets influence our life, environment and the people who come into it. That may be the next step; observing the observer who is witness to these events.

Jitendra