September 2020 Bardo Buzz (02-09)

The Joy of Sacrifice

Secrets of the Sufi Way E. J. Gold

THE SACRIFICES

THE SACRIFICE OF PEACE OF MIND

The first sacrifice ordinary man cannot make for himself"¦another must make it for him. This is why the first sacrifice is numbered zero. The Sacrifice of Peace of Mind is brought about simply by being exposed to the possibility of knowledge, thus having the opportunity for transformation.

In the diagram of certain alchemical processes there is usually shown a cave into which the experimenter is entering. He is expected to go all the way through to the other end of the cave.

This cave is also called "The Labyrinth". We call it the Corridor of Madness. It is the period during which the psyche is "eaten" by the essence -- when the impressions stored in the false centers are transferred to the real essence After this, essence emerges as the active rather than the passive force controlling the organism.

The corridor must be traversed completely from one end to the other without stopping, going off in search of side exits, turning back or hoping for outside help. We must not give into despair, or look for something soothing and calming within the corridor. This is the real meaning of the magician's warning to Aladdin (Al' Udden) in the cave of treasures

Nothing other than the path of struggle will be effective in the corridor. The madness will not abate until the end has been reached. This is why essence is exposed and tested before the student begins the journey. If essence is too fearful, savage or stupid -- or if it holds its own survival at the cost of other beings -- it is not allowed to embark on the journey, under the guidance of the school at that time. One is never allowed to endanger the Work.

To be continued....

HARMONIC RESONANCE by E.J. Gold

"If you are clean and pure and high-minded and you are in love and you are the embodiment of love, the embodiment of consciousness, you clean yourself and purify yourself, you certainly can recognize when something or someone is schmutzy, without judgment. No judgment, just "Ew, boy, you're a mess. Do you want to clean up?" "No." "Okay, fine, fine, fine." You don't want to clean up anybody that doesn't want to be cleaned up, right? Leave them alone, let them come out of it themselves, because the only thing you can do by helping somebody come out of a weakness is make them weaker, more dependent on someone else to do it. Ultimately, that never works. You've got to get out of it yourself. You've got to do it yourself. You've got to make your own moves. Get the strength and do it.

"If you don't have personal strength, then you get higher strength. How do you do that? You identify with, you purify yourself and bring yourself into a higher state, a higher condition in your own state, in your own condition. You bring that state up. You bring your condition up. It's the same exact life, but on a higher level. So, different things happen to you than happen to you on a lower level, even though it's the same life. It's just that different choices are made different. Different actions happen, different things occur to you, things happen to you that are better on the higher than on the lower. Just good things go your way, things go your way more, and the more you purify, the more you cleanse, and the more you bring yourself into alignment. It's all about harmonic resonance."

Excerpt from workshop talk on
Higher Consciousness
Oct. 6,2015
Edited by T.A.Jones

ARE YOU HUMMING?

It's amazing how the simplest of activities can provide a moment of self-observation, of possible awakening.

A group of us were discussing the issue of hearing and how humming can sound like talking. That started a conversation about humming. E.J reminded us humming is not a good habit.

Throughout the remainder of the day I observed myself humming. I was surprised to discover just how often I did hum. It was a surprise because I thought I knew when I hum. It was happening under the radar.

I observed myself humming and not humming and saw the definite change in the quality of my attention and general energetic field between humming and not humming.

During this experiment in observation of humming and not humming, I saw that humming removes me from the experience of the here and now.

What a wonderful gift. I have one more point of observation for helping me stay in the moment.

Barbara Haynes

GOOD NEWS FROM THE GARDEN

Good news: The raised bed garden is making progress. These humble beginnings are a small part of a project with the vision to create a stunningly beautiful species, diverse and abundantly productive, 100% pesticide-free food, herb and flower garden in total harmony with nature. With humans being in a reciprocal relationship with all the elements and creatures, this luscious garden provides nourishment of the highest vibration for body and soul, and inspiration for the world wide community.

More news:

For those of you who have attended the weekly Distance Energy Healing offered every Friday on gorebaggtv, for the last 3 years, you know that we recently, this summer, changed format.

Distance Energy Healing (DEH) is still happening every week, Friday morning, from 11 a.m. - to noon PST.

It is very much an experimental and a collaborative event, aimed at increasing self-awareness, shifting identity, changing beliefs no longer useful to our life path, or energetic clearing where needed.

The DEH event moved to Zoom, and registration is required every month to get the new meeting ID and passcode for that month.

You can sign up via the IDHHB contact form. and I will send you an e-mail with the information.

Christiane Wolters

YOUR PRESENCE MAKES THE CIRCLE STRONGER

I wrote this in a recent Bardo Buzz article after the May workshop. It strikes me that it is worth repeating with the Convention just around the corner.

Here, reference is made to the after-reverberations of the workshop.

"This atmosphere of harmony (which prevailed for days following) seems to be the result of the volume of work force generated as a result of our focused gathering. We each contribute our presence and attention, which strikes a doh that reverberates throughout the entire group. Everyone benefits and those benefits reverberate out to everyone and everything in our immediate circle. The larger the group, the stronger the doh, the larger the circle that is affected."

If some part of our work is geared toward bringing the creation to life, then the force generated in these gatherings evokes higher energy into this level of the creation. Every individual in the circle radiates that energy, which can affect those in their immediate circle of influence. We bring those around us more to life as the result of our recently charged and revitalized presence and attention. What a gift!

The more people involved, the stronger the circle. Your presence matters. Your participation matters. Please take time to join us for the upcoming Labor Day Convention. You'll be glad you did!

Jewel McInroy

DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION IN A PARTICULAR WAY

"So the best thing to do, I think, is to play Team Fortress or Diablo 3 and keep yourself on a level of a constant challenge over the next 3 to 4 days. Keep constantly challenging yourself and if you can't do it that way, do it some other way in like crafting, maybe in business things, so whatever it is, put your energy into something in which you can actually direct your attention rather than let your attention float, or let it just coast, or let it follow whatever happens that's just usually what you do, which is associative. So rather than that, I recommend that you direct your attention in a particular way."

-E.J. GOLD
Submitted by Nishit Gajjar

WE CAN NEVER REALLY KNOW THE WORLD

We can never really know the world. It has too many faces and is inexhaustible, even if behind the façade, it is really very small. We can only behold it and allow ourselves to fully drink in what unfolds before us. We can never fully see the world; instead, we must be content with sensing its inchoate shapes and colors beyond what our physical senses can reveal.

Painting, like all art, is suggestion. The unknown and mysterious world is revealed by art, which points towards what the viewer may notice. Even though people, for the most part, don't know it, they are staring into a void -- a void that is everything and nothing, a pregnant emptiness. If you stare at a blank wall long enough, you will begin to see things emerge like messages from a magic eight-ball. If you stare long enough, mere images evolve into whole realities.

As an artist, as a painter, I suggest what you, as an observer, might notice as you unwittingly create your reality. I can help shape that reality to be more engaging and exciting. But since you as the observer are creating your own experience, I am ultimately serving as a mirror to reveal you to yourself. I am the master of ceremonies for a ritual in which you use my art to discover yourself.

Contemplation, acrylics on canvas
Gerald Porter

LIFE IS FRAGILE: TAKE TIME FOR WHAT MATTERS AND LET GO OF WHAT DOESN'T

"A human being really is this," he inclined his upper body forward from the waist at a right angle to his legs, and pointed to his mouth and rear end, "the mouth in the front and the asshole in the back. I'm sure you'll find it amusing to note that the front and the back are exactly the same type of sphincter with a tube joining them. An 'IN' sphincter, a tube, and an 'OUT' sphincter. Everything else is designed to move the tube around on the mud, so it can find stuff to push in the front hole and squeeze out the back. "If you really want to know the significance of a human primate life, you can see the trail of excrement it left behind. It's a tube travelling through space, propelled by hands, arms, legs, feet, and a brain; the brain is only designed to find more food and a place to deposit the waste. It's a self-propelled compost heap designed to keep the garden in some decent shape. "It's a biological device subject to biological ailments and frailties....

....Consider how fragile human life is, how fragile any life is, and you will realize that you could just as easily be dead. By accident you're not"

....A virus is not actually alive. It doesn't respond to bactericides; it doesn't respond to anything that will kill bacteria. Bacteria are alive and can be fought and killed. Penicillin or antibiotics of various kinds can counteract pneumonia, because pneumonia is caused by the pneumococcus bacilli; but you can't combat a common cold because it's caused by a virus which is not alive and therefore cannot be killed...."

Talk of the month #57

A Short History of History E.J. Gold

We all have a temporary place in this world. Facing up the fragility of life can be scary. It can also be empowering. It can help us hold onto a perspective that supports us living a life that is dedicated to the "Work" and make the most of each of our days, learning from our mistakes, and use those lessons to become a better version of ourselves with positive experiences, enjoying the present moment and celebrating, with gratitude, the way things are.

We complain that we don't have time for our practice or for working on our projects and goals, and at the same time, we put things off as if we have unlimited time to make our projects happen - like for me, a book I promised to write or the skill of learning guitar, I put off for quite a while...
When we truly embrace the fact that our lives are short and precious, we can choose to leave the negativity behind. We can choose to let go of the things that don't matter so much, and we have to say no to some things so we can say yes to those things that do matter to most to us. Then we are more likely to make better use of that time, and will have more quality space and time in our days.

Michele Marie

What if you choose today and every day to be a holy day?

Every Day A Holy Day

VIDEO GAMING - A VALUABLE PRACTICE IN ONE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE

"It's important to understand how life and death play out in Team Fortress; it's very different from Diablo 3. In D3, if your character dies, you have one of three options that can happen at that time. In TF2 if your character dies, it is usually an opportunity to do something good for your team, depending on your fear of death and your acceptance of it, and so on. But if death is an ally and a friend, you can use death as a means to a much greater end.

If you're stuck in the middle, for instance, if you're really into this lifetime, that would be like being really, really into the lifetime of your character between flag runs or between deaths. In other words, you have a death every three or four minutes, or more, if you're playing right. And then you get respawned.

If that little three-minute interval is your whole life, if that's your whole thing, your whole existence, in those three minutes, if that's what everything is about, it's doomed. You're going to lose all that. So you need to be able to get back to the player from your avatar; you need to work your way back from the avatar to the player.

That's what you're in the process of learning how to do -- work your way back and maintain that essential posture. That way when the character dies, it's just another death. When the character is respawned, it's just another respawn.

And if you understand the greater game, the bigger game - the little life games that are happening are nothing. The game of life is nothing. It's the game that's superior, above that, that contains the whole livingness structure.

The whole organic structure, that's just a level in a much larger game, the point of which is to win, but win not necessarily by overwhelming things, or by force, or by trickery, but win by weaving well, by moving well, staying in the ascribed paths.

You have a super consciousness. You have a consciousness that's above the consciousness of the avatar. That's what I'm trying to get you to work out, sort out, to get yourself back from that avatar consciousness to self-consciousness, to real consciousness, to be aware of yourself as a higher entity, certainly a lot higher than the organic world.

Q: "In today's world, most people are recommending meditation and introspection to deal with the anxiety many feel due to the world wide pandemic. And you, E.J., recommend playing video games?"

E.J. responded with the recommendation to kill something not for yourself, but you're killing for something higher -- kill for God.

One locus of the Cosmic Consciousness is the Destroyer. You have a Creator, a Maintainer and a Destroyer. All three of those forces are working at the same time, which is what you call a balance of forces or a balance of power. All three forces have to be working at the same time to create any kind of effect in the Higgs Field.

I have never said calm meditation is something you should avoid. In fact, the opposite, it's great if you can master that. But also, you should be able to play a video game. It's not an either or thing. They are both very valuable.

Comment: "I remember playing for extended periods of time the games E.J. has recommended. I noticed that I could concentrate, that the game "was taking me". It was almost doing the work for me of concentration. And afterwards, I felt the same effects from it as I would when I would concentrate while meditating on my own."

E.J. responded with playing video games is a computer-assisted meditation. Every time a new technology is introduced, there's resistance, a reaction to it. Over the centuries, this pattern can be seen in many areas. For example, the rejection the artists faced when introducing their art, created with the new technologies of etching, engraving and the printing press. And with each new art form, the previous inventions are accepted, and the objections are transferred to reject the new.

Comment: "Also the teaching, how it appears in that form, in Team Fortress, that you are talking about, E.J., about death and coming back and responding -- having that other consciousness that's above the normal consciousness of a particular lifetime -- that's very evident there. Especially after you let us know that when we go in the game, it's there. And that confirms my experience, it's very, very present."

E.J. continued with, "That's your purpose for being there. Also, one thing you'll notice about Team Fortress, and it's not true hardly of any other games, that all the people playing are friends with each other. They are killing each other, but they are death transcendent beings. And they talk about it, that they died on their way to ... and their guts were ripped out .... It's a violent game, but not a violent game. It's not taken as violent; it's the way you stop a flag runner. And you do it in clever ways, and you counteract those clever ways with other clever ways. That's what creates the game. It's a lot of on-the-spot, immediate, momentary decision-making, which is larger than the single game you're playing."

Your consciousness is greater than the game consciousness -- that's the point. And you're learning how to draw back from the avatar consciousness into the player consciousness. And you're doing it in a variety of ways, like in Diablo 3. But it's maybe quicker to experience that through TF2. It's a visceral experience also.

The other thing is, if you can't stay calm, peaceful and serene, you'll be driven nuts by the explosive activity in Team Fortress. You need to overcome that by learning how to deal with shocking ambushes, literally shocking ambushes. It gives you an idea of what to expect, not the thing itself, but the general nature of it. Team Fortress is the world of -- "Oh, I did not expect that to happen."

A 15-minute excerpt
Monday, 8/10/20 at Gorby's Place,
Marvette Kort