Re: It's a subtly dangerous time here in class.
Posted by lou on February 21, 2002 at 23:34:47:

In Reply to: It's a subtly dangerous time here in class. posted by John on February 21, 2002 at 21:09:49:

Class:

I spent the first 3 or 4 years of my life with my essence being
basically who I was (positively charged i.e. aggressive as it was), as
I suppose all of us were. But then personally for me it was some 40
years later before my personality began to crack and
become “fluctuatingly” passive so that my essence that had remained
incased (frozen) so long could begin to see spurts of growth. It seems
a bit extraordinary that it takes so long in this type of “Work” (6 ½
years for me, with a little more than a year and a half of that time
participating in this class) to realize that I have a particular kind
of psychology quite apart from this person “I” take to be ‘lou’.

This type of work starts, as far as I can tell with the “type” of
person I am psychologically. The recognition that I have this
psychological body with its various attitudes and ‘buffers’ and
opinions are only recognizable by ‘me’ in an awakened state
of “Mindfulness”. This is not my usual (as in current) state “yet”. I
find myself moving mechanically in and through my personality far more
often than I am “awake” and moving from essence. I am not so readily
fooled about this fact today and I don’t feel so terrible against
myself about this, for the experience of people in general is that of
complete sleep walking in this respect. Mindfulness is not the usual
state of affairs in the world today. One good look at television news
broadcast, a walk in a busy mall, or the front page of the daily news,
will abundantly confirm this as ‘fact’.

This is my usual state of affairs, and I don’t see it when I’m narrow
and difficult. On the contrary I imagine myself to be open-minded,
unbiased, and particularly aware of my pre-programmed personality
types. The bottom line at this stage for me is to try (begin) to apply
self-observation to myself i.e. this ‘thing’ I call lou. And this at
the most strategic times i.e. when I don’t think they apply.

>—I don't think you've caught on yet to which one of those eight "cons"
that I was talking about. Ask yourself, as you look over those
tapes: "What was I doing here?"

So back to the old drawing board for o’l-lou, hopefully with an even
more open mind, so to “observe” MY CON even though virtually containing
no anger in those most resent conversations with Deirdre, that I
obviously have not seen ‘yet’.

Goodnight All;

lou

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