A thought structure swells and inflates, in an oppressive, sluggish bubble,
It breathes with its jerky breath and bursts when it finally enters the Field of Welcome.
As you pick up the thought flower, and spin it between your fingers,
It is already fading away.
©FJ April 2022
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Merci à tous…
Notes & Silence 
Thought as a flower.
It must develop and unfurl.
It must be pollinated.
It fades and turns to seed, which floats away on the winds of mind, developing into further thought.
Where does thought take root?
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Yesterday as I drove back from the poetry-filled forest landscapes of Belgian Ardennes, I listened to an audio version of a document reminding me about the 9 levels of consciousness, as phrased in Buddhist Teachings.
I had not heard about those for a while and never had I realized it was so consistent with the experience of silent sitting.
Maybe because the experience simply was not there…
Have you heard about those,
Are you familiar with Alaya ?
Surely there has to be comparable elements in other traditions…
In Christianity, I cannot think of anything like it though,
Personification of divine attributes / duality may though highly virtuous in many ways may also hinder access to consciousness depths,
precisely where ‘thoughts take root’
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Those 9 levels are not something I’ve come across, so will reserve comment until I am better informed…
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I’ve had a look at this. Cannot readily identify a Christian equivalent. Maybe 9 planetary spheres in Hermeticism? Possibly some link to angelic orders (but I don’t think that counts to 9)? Neither seems likely; both need heavy interpolative interpretation, I suspect.
One Christian ideology sees man as tri-partite; the world-conscious body, self-conscious soul and god-conscious spirit. That might be interpreted as a simplified but similar system.
I take it Alaya is generally similar akashic record? I find it an odd concept – a sort of non personalised but individual library, though that is rather a clumsy description. Sometimes, I think we make these ideas unnecessarily complicated.
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very interesting indeed…I’ll read about Hermeticism, I do not know anything about it.
Tripartite conception : In Buddhism, they talk about the Three bodies of the Buddha.
It is easier for me to relate to that as it is much less loaded with dogmatic stiffness (from a westerners’ standpoint, at least)
I’m also thinking, in a more politically prosaic way of the theory of the two bodies of the King (les deux corps du Roi) which is more comparable to a distant echo from our discussion.
Concerning the last paragraph of your comment, I ‘ve recently come to understand something about the Buddhist (Indian ??) compulsion to list everything (Let’s call this the C.I.D Disease : Compulsive Itemisation Disorder)..
It is quite different to the way we perceive listing in our civilization.
It is neither in the aim of sorting elements nor is it about referring to a chronological unfolding of content…
this cans be quite surprising to us.
IT has to be approached in a fractal manner. Each item contains an encrypted version of all the others.
And everything can be uncoiled out of the analysis of one single component.
From a didactic perspective, this understanding can be interesting, as it allows a wide variety of angles to consider a teaching.
There has been a post about this somewhere on the blog called Listomania, but I can’t remember whether is has been translated or not…
As for Akashic record, This term being widely claimed and overused by new age communities, I’ve always been reluctant to further study its meaning…
Maybe I should think twice, now that you’re bringing this up.
What is really worth investigating though is the ninth level of consciousness, blowing the individual out of the entanglement of the 8 previous levels.
The message being that underneath, it is away about freedom waiting to be found.
Here is a parallel with a Christian spirituality, isn’t it ?
Underneath all our gesticulations, conceptualizations, world representation, God is waiting
This is the place for infinite mercy (where all karmic mechanisms are unplugged —
the wheel is turning, the hamster is gone.
Any consideration about the wheel or whether it is turning or not has become worthless.
Laughable.
A liberation laugh.
A liberation laugh ?
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Hermeticism is a big subject, which leads into alchemy. I am no expert on the technicalities, but think of it as an over-complicated structure of personal transformation. Some of the terminology is impenetrable, but the imagery can be quite entertaining.
The akashic strucure is not part of my thought process either; I am merely aware of its general significance, so it was a handy term to employ.
The ninth level seems to me to be pure awareness, pure perception, unencumbered by being tied up into what is perceived. That may not be another’s interpretation however.
A parallel with some Christian spirituality, maybe. There is much that masquerades as spiritual, and I am unsure how spiritual it is to divest oneself of all responsibility on the basis of what is loosely termed faith, which can be a Christian weakness.
Maybe I’m too cynical.
Compulsive Itemisation Disease sounds like something that will become a clinical psychological issue once someone with a reputation to advance gets wind of the term.
Did I mention cynicism?
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argh I should have registered the term.
This was just the thing I needed : a reputation.
Does it really have to be a good one ?
If not, I may coin the term right now.
These days, there seems to be a strong correlation between bad reputation and media exposure.
but as they say in these gloomy days, » correlation does not mean causation ».
They simply forgot the « yet » at the end of the sentence.
Cynicism ?
Do you mean typical lack of ability to relay the artificial enthusiasm expressed through manufactured elements of language so as to make sure we belong to a group ?
I guess I have all the cyn-ptoms.
But don’t suffer from the counterbalancing effects of decompensation fits.
((not sure this is properly phrased here…)
thank you for the notes on Hermeticism.
It it true one may easily get lost in the plays of language offered by what we name in French ‘la langue des oiseaux’, which , I believe, is what you referred to.
The endless cult of an underlying meaning finally unveiled owing to a slight cognitive twist while processing words.
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No, the fact of a reputation is the issue, not whether it is good or bad. But I think I have a better view of you than that.
Reputation held as of little worth, if any. To be noticed is something which is often desired, but is not something to be desired. As desire itself, it is something best let go.
Is that flattery? Ignore it. I would neither inflate nor deflate another’s ego. It is the other’s problem. I have enough to do with my own,
Cynicism… It’s something that comes as second nature to us lawyers (I am not here accusing you of being a lawyer – I speak of those who are as I am, professionally). That may seem strange, given that many are very status conscious. Maybe that is why I, and those few of my fellows I quite like, have a certain antipathy toward lawyers in general, and why many such lawyers seem to regard everyone else with disdain.
I am not a joiner. I am not a socialite. I turn up to meetings where everyone has a suit and tie, but I have a tee-shirt, cargo trousers and fleece. I am not of these.
Sorry, but you have lost me on « decompensation fits ». What do you mean?
Hermeticism, as I understand it, particularly when you get into the alchemical end, talks in completely and deliberately incomprehensible code. I suspect in order to appear clever. So clever the alchemists probably had no idea what they were talking about either.
Try reading some James Joyce, whom some say hid a good deal of mysticism in his writings. He is completely unreadable if you try to understand him. But there is a certain entertainment in the trying. Best read in short bursts, out loud, as then you do not dwell too long on the nonsensical but just go with the rhythm.
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Hi Simon..
I must admit I had a rough night and am having difficulties wrapping what’s left of my head around your answer.
As far as I am concerned, I was merely playing with words, laughing back at what I identified as a joke in the final paragraph of your previous message…
‘ a reputation…this is just what I need now…’ (sarcasm)
What you said about lawyers is making me smile..I think I understand.
What brings concern is that, when trying to widen the scope of your statement, I have a feeling it can apply to most professional classes where suits and ties are conventional.
Bankers, salespeople…
You certainly have to be the boss of your structure if your popping in meetings wearing flip flaps and flower shirts (exaggerated on purpose– I had to look up ‘cargo trousers’..I’m wearing one myself most of the year, love them.
The dustier, the better. There is much enjoyment to be found in the way this stance creates awkwardness in others’ eyes.
But I guess this gently provocative habit is much deeper engraved in the British mind…which forces players to keep pushing boundaries to maintain the effect.
As for flattery, I’ve long been aware of how sensitive I might be to that trigger for giving it any credit ( to the point of balancing the weight in the other extreme part of the spectrum and starting to enjoy losing credit.
Us musicians (I’m not accusing you of being a musician, simply speaking of that sticky troubadour mind of mine) are beyond disdain and flattery anyway.
(‘Treating those two Impostors just the same’)
Decompensation fits
I’m not sure what I meant. In any case, the translation is sloppy, no doubt.
I was alluding to those moments (fits ? as in coughing fit ? ) when you have been applying too much pressure on your organism or psychic structure while trying to compensate for a certain set up during weeks / months/years… and start ‘decompensating’
in the case of cynicism, which, if it were a device part of a defense mechanism, would, on regular intervals, express as the opposite energy (e.g. people embracing naive belief systems, falling for too-bright-to-be-true psychological lures in their daily lives -sentimentally / professionally)
So a cynic without ‘decompensation fits’ is of the purest breed.
Dubliners (Joyce) was the object of a one-year study (British Lit, First year)…You’re right, I never got a single word…I just remember a painful attempt at turning pages, unable to find « footnotes » no one had read so I could have pretended I actually understood anything.
the final line of your comment makes me think of the way I believe mantras should be approaches.
Sound, rhythm.
Don’t bother trying to understand
Like food goes through the digestive process and feeds you whether you’re able to name the chemical structure of involved proteins and enzyms, or not.
Have a nice Sunday
I hope the weather is nice enough to allow you to trade off cargo trousers for shorts for a moment.
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