Comment by Kirby Urner on 11th mo. 6, 2016 at 12:24pm

My question is: do you find your message of detachment and liberation from outward forms echoed in the writings of others, and if so, how closely do these writings mirror yours in terms of vocabulary?  Is it possible to share your message using different words? Do you agree that words and vocabulary are themselves "outward forms"?

To choose a concrete example, our Quaker meeting was selling used books to raise funds for a worthy cause, and I purchased four of six volumes by one Maurice Nicoll entitled Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky, written in the 1940s. 

I'd not read much of Ouspensky's stuff since the 1970s when an undergrad at the university.  I've enjoyed reconnecting with this "2nd generation" teacher, a Scottish psychologist with a Jungian background. These books have sat next to my main reading chair, and bed, for some weeks now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Nicoll

http://new.hurleydonson.com/maurice-nicoll-spiritual-giant-gentle-g...

Maurice cites the Gospels quite a bit and identifies as Christian.  He teaches about not identifying with outward forms, including thoughts and feelings stirred up by our being in the world.  Thoughts and feelings provide raw material for "the Work" which involves recognizing one's own programming and automaticity (personality) as a first step.  He sees Jesus as teaching something similar.

Let me find a representative passage...

Self-observation done sincerely from the knowledge of the ideas of this Work lets in light into this inner darkness, this inner chaos of oneself. That is how self- observation is defined in the Work for it says that self-observation "lets in light" into oneself and adds that many things can take place in darkness, just like certain chemical processes which cannot take lace in the presence of light.  Light is consciousnesses. This is the beginning of that possible inner transformation of Man that all esoteric teaching, including the Gospels and this Work, is always speaking about through the centuries.

In reading these volumes, in no particular order, I find myself thinking the message resonates with the message of one Keith Saylor on QuakerQuaker and this leads to my question above. 

I'm wondering if you see yourself as a part of a lineage or tradition.  If so, is it exclusively Christian?  Would it be possible to share your message using a different vocabulary?  How identified are you with the specific outward form of your own expressions of faith?  Do you have a list of teachers you'd acknowledge as "teaching the same thing"?

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 6, 2016 at 7:53pm

Ideas about the Light are not the Light -- but they're presumably byproducts of that Light at work.

The thing that's always struck me about Gurdjieff's followers -- is that they were followers. They may have been doing 'self-observation,' but there was always an outside authority telling them what to observe and whether they were doing it right; and that external reliance on tradition and expert observers undercut the whole thing.

In the case of Quakers, we seem to have had a long-standing tension between two messages: explicitly that 'the internal Guide within each individual is sufficient' and implicitly that we overall distrust it because we don't entirely trust ourselves or each other to get the Message right. Hence our tendency to committeolatry... The tension steadies us and also holds us back.

We Quakers believe we need to 'get by with a little help from our Friends', relying on their connection to God as well as our own -- but as the story of Micaiah suggests, 100 prophets are not 100 times as inspired as one, and may even be less so.

In the end, the community ends up needing to trust its communal guidance & the individual ends up needing to turn within and rely on what he's given -- including whatever ideas and feelings and external facts that our Guidance points us to.

Comment by Kirby Urner on 11th mo. 6, 2016 at 11:30pm

Right, I'm not seeing this Fourth Way lineage as a forking, much less a cloning of Quakerism. Nicoll may be Christian, but there's no hint that he considers himself a Friend.

The schematics or diagrams of one's psychological internals these folks suggest internalizing, as a means to an end, is way more elaborate than any I've seen purporting to be Quaker. 

Our most elaborate diagram, that I've seen anyway, is the "Quaker guts" poster, showing the many outward bifurcations within Quakerism itself. https://flic.kr/p/7qsik6

However, the suggestion one may transform one's response to outward forms, rather than identify with them, by letting in the Light, sounds somewhat Sayloresque and I wondered if Keith found echoes of his message in others' teachings, however alien in their outward form of expression. 

Nicoll is also clear that progress in the Work leads in the direction of nonviolence, whereas remaining unconscious of our own robotic / reflexive nature leads us into endless war.  The practice of these psychological disciplines would seem to share Quakerism's intent, to uproot the causes of war by relying on higher intelligence (Guidance).

Comment by Kirby Urner on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 12:16pm

Switching to another lineage, Christian Science, I'm finding teachings that appear to echo Keith's. Like this article by Kim Haig, Guided by Mind, not opinions, in the June 13, 2016 Sentinel. The author suggests the inner guide has no mortal opinions, only eternal thoughts, and as we allow the Presence to indwell, we shed our mortal concerns accordingly, but apparently not in such a way as to render ourselves inoperable and ineffective in the world.  That to me seems the greatest concern around "letting go" of outward forms: that one will then immediately go off the road, quite literally, and into some worse circumstances.  Like "how do I get paid?" is always a first question, right?  "Where will my daily bread come from?".  I haven't looked into what the Gulen charters teach about this, not the expert, for all my underscoring Quaker-Sufi connections. If schools have any calling to coach about psychology and getting along, what's the social consensus.  That's what the election was about to some extent.  I should switch over to your thread to talk about it though.  Here I'm looking at the core teachings, regardless of school.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 1:34pm

The logical hole I find is the question of why a physical world was created & populated with beings of all-too-mortal preoccupations in the first place.

Our existence as worldly beings makes little sense if we were intended to live as pure spirit. To explain our existence, I have to conclude we were created as a sort of 'amphibious' interface between Spirit and other modes of experience.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 2:46pm

The impulse of the immanent Presence of Jesus Christ breaking into the conscience and conscious and teaching, through direct inward experience, complete sufficiency itself in itself is the new or different way. The power and guidance of this impulse inshining into the conscience and conscious leads people into a different way of existence wherein the outward impulse of political, religious, economic, powers and principalities no longer holds sway. The outward impulse of activists, agitators, and ideologues, of all outward political, religious, and economic forms, parties, and traditions loses power in the inward experience of the sufficiency of the immanent Presence of Jesus Christ pouring directly, and without mediation, into the conscience and conscious overcomes the outward impulse. When we lay down identity, meaning, and purpose, in all outward political, religious, and economic forms and the people who profess and promulgate those forms, the activists and agitators from all persuasions will convulse over their lose of power over human being. Adherence to and habitation in the inward presence of the Spirit of Jesus Christ as sufficient and complete in itself in itself, sustaining the conscious, informing the conscience, and giving identity meaning, and purpose without regard for outward political, religious, economic, power and principalities, is the second coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is come and is coming as people take habitation in the sufficiency of immanent Heaven.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 3:19pm

If Jesus has shown up and explained to you why he didn't just show up in the first place, what all this previous... stuff... has been about, then you can please answer my question instead of repeating your familiar assertion.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 5:10pm

Hi Forrest. It is not mine to fill the logical whole you admit to with outward intellectual forms. It is mine to repeat the testimony of the inward witness of the complete sufficiency of the second coming of the immananent Presence of Jesus Christ in the conscious and conscience without regard for any outward political, religious, or economic institution or those people who participate in and nurture those institutions. I will speak this testimony which I witness even above your objections.

Comment by Kirby Urner on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 6:26pm

I've been reading in a new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, which talks about that time the Supreme Court ruled that Jehovah's Witnesses must salute and pledge allegiance to the US flag even though they saw this as an act of idolatry and against their religion.

This court decision sparked a lot of anger against the Jehovah's Witnesses and many reports of forcing them to submit to the law of the land poured in. A mob psychology felt the Supreme Court had endowed it with new legitimacy to act out, as Eleanor had feared might happen.

Moral: resisting outward forms publicly may result in persecution.  Quakers know this well.  Keith may be lucky in having his religious freedoms protected during his time and place in history.  Not everyone is thus privileged with such protected or even acknowledged human rights. 

This so-called "Gobitis decision" was reversed three years later, restoring to Jehovah's Witnesses their religious freedom.

http://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/lessons...
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102008085
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_...

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 11, 2016 at 7:05pm

"For he on honey-dew hath fed,. And drunk the milk of Paradise."

If 'Because' is all the explanation you need, I'll just go back to pestering God.

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