Adventures With Cassiopaea

Chapter 14

Here, again, the C's are pointing me in the direction of realizing that the entire purpose of the communication was to prepare me for the task of utilizing what I was learning through this personal initiation process so that it would be of benefit to others. Of course, at this particular moment in time, I was not feeling terribly confident about anything. I was having trouble with my eyes - an inflammation had taken hold and I had to keep medication in them that made it difficult to see.

Q: (L) I am still in the process of making major changes in my life based on such insights...
A: And, how do you feel when you make a decision to make one of these changes?
Q: (L) It hurts to make some decisions, even if I feel that it is the right thing to do. It can be painful and scary.
A: Relief?
Q: (L) Definitely relief!
A: And...
Q: (L) I have some little hope that maybe something else will happen to help with the work if I make sure that my own life is clean. I am cutting off my financial support, and that is frightening.

Q: (L) I am between a rock and a hard place.
A: Not really.
Q: (L) Easy for you to say.
A: Wait and see. When you get money, pay someone to transcribe.
Q: (L) I will do it myself as quickly as possible... SV was supposed to help me with this... but obviously she is fading from the picture here...
A: Maybe, maybe not, you are not completely in control of all possible factors.
Q: (L) Well, however things work, I don't really care right now. As soon as I can see again, I will get back to transcribing. I have sent some samples out to a couple of places. I have had some VERY positive responses...
A: Have fun!
Q: (L) What is that supposed to mean? I don't like the sound of that! The other day when you said 'celebrate!' all I did was suffer!
A: Stop suffering!
Q: (L) I can't help it! I feel so sorry for [my soon to be ex-husband]! He is a master at being a victim! It tears me apart! Anything I need to know about my situation? I feel pretty desperate.
A: Has it been "desperate" before?
Q: (L) Yes.
A: Did you turn into dust?
Q: (L) No, but I thought I would!
A: What about your settlement?
Q: (L) God knows when that will happen! You won't tell me!
A: If we did, you'd become a "softie."
Q: (L) It seems that over the course of time, you have turned us more and more in the direction of learning on our own. Does this mean that it is winding down to come to a halt?
A: No.
Q: (L) Can you tell me what this means?
A: You needed more assistance earlier.
Q: (L) Well, am I correct in the MPD idea regarding SV?
A: Pursue with an open mind and cross check all analyses.

At this point, there is almost an entire month between sessions. The reason for this is the fact that my infections became so severe that I was bedridden for almost a month. My ears, eyes and lungs were infected and I had been ordered by the doctor to not read or look at a computer screen for several weeks. I had to spend several periods a day with hot compresses on my eyes. In a funny sort of way it represented my human reaction to what I was literally seeing, hearing and experiencing. I was also depressed almost beyond endurance.

During the same period, one of my elder daughters was also so depressed that she could barely get out of the bed. Even though I was struggling with my own health issues, I was more concerned about her than anything and I took her to the doctor several times to have her checked for any kind of physical illness. Our family doctor had been part of our lives for about seven years at this point, and he was intimately familiar with all of the ups and downs of our situation, and he was concerned as well. He ran every test known to medical science and finally just said that if I was patient and supportive with this most sensitive of children, that she would pull through it. Being of the "old school," he didn't think that medication was the right option. He knew my daughter too well.

The next disaster was that my next to youngest daughter broke her ankle on the trampoline in the back yard. I had been gone from the house only long enough to pick up the eldest from school, and when we returned, there was another crisis to deal with.

I struggled on, and during this month something amazing occurred. In the past year I was given a copy of a lecture of Gurdjieff which describes exactly what transpired. Had I read it before the experience, I wouldn't have understood it at all. And I realize that anyone who has not been through it also will probably not fully understand it, which is why I am taking the time to explain the events and experiences so as to provide a platform for understanding some of the more esoteric teachings of different pathways. Ordinary Life itself, properly understood, can indeed be the means by which we are initiated, as Gurdjieff believed. He wrote about the "First Initiation" in the following way:

You will see that in life you get back exactly what you put in. Your life is the mirror of what you are, it is your image. You are passive, blind, demanding. You take all, you accept all, without ever feeling indebted. Your attitude towards the world and towards life is the attitude of one who has the right to demand and take. Of one who doesn't need to pay or gain. You believe that all things are due to you, only because it's you! All your blindness is there. It doesn't catch your attention. It is however what, in you, separates a world from another.

You have no measure to measure yourself up. You live only between 'I like it' and 'I don't like it'. Which means that you have appreciation only for yourself. You do not allow for anything above you - theoretically or logically maybe, but not in reality. This is why you are demanding and keep on thinking that everything should be cheap, and you can afford to pay for anything you want. You don't recognize anything above yourself, or outside yourself or inside yourself. This is why, I repeat, you have no measure and live only to satisfy your whims.

Yes, your 'self appreciation' makes you blind! It is the biggest obstacle to a new life. One has to be able to pass this obstacle, this threshold, before one can go further. It is the test that separates the 'chaff' from the 'wheat' in people. No matter how intelligent, how endowed, how brilliant a man is, if he doesn't change his opinion about himself, he will be lost for inner development, for the work based on self-knowledge, for a real evolution. He will stay as he is all his life. The first demand, the first condition, the first test for he who wants to work on himself is to change his appreciation of himself. He cannot just imagine, or simply believe or think, but actually *see* things in himself that he did not see before, really see them. Never will his opinion about himself change as long as he will not see inside himself. And in order to see, he has to learn to see: it is the first initiation of man into self-knowledge.

Before anything else, he has to know what to look for. Once he knows it, he has to make efforts, focus his attention, look constantly, with tenacity. By maintaining his attention on it, by not forgetting about looking, one day he may see. If he sees once, he can see a second time, and if this is repeated he cannot ignore seeing. This is the state to look for in our observation; it is from this that the true desire, the desire to evolve, will be born; from cold we're becoming hot, vibrating; we will be deeply touched by our reality.

Today we have only the illusion of what we are. We overestimate ourselves. We do not respect ourselves. To respect myself, I have to have recognized in me a part which is higher than the other parts, and to which I show respect by the attitude I have towards it. In this way I will respect myself. And my relationships with others will be ruled by the same respect.

We have to understand that all other measuring units, talent, erudition, culture, genius, are changing units, units of detail. The only true measure, never changing, objective, the only real one, it is the measure of inner vision. 'I' see - 'I' see myself - and you have measured. With a higher, real part, you have measured a lower one, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the respective roles of each part, will bring you to self-respect. But you will see it is not easy. And it is not a bargain. One has to pay a lot. For the bad payers, the lazy, the losers, no chance. One must pay, pay a lot, pay immediately and pay in advance. Pay from oneself. With sincere efforts, wholeheartedly, without expectations.

The more you will be willing to pay without reticence, without cheating, without falsity, the more you will receive. And from then on, you will meet your true nature. And you will see all the tricks, all the dishonesty it goes to in order to avoid paying cash. Because you have to pay with all the gratuitous theories, all the deeply rooted convictions, all the prejudice, all conventions, all 'I like it' and 'I don't like it'. Without bargaining, honestly, not just make believe. Trying to see while using fake money.

Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you think you are, that you overestimate yourself, therefore that you lie to yourself. That you lie to yourself always, every moment, all day long, your whole life. That the lie rules you to the extent that you cannot control it anymore. You are its victim. You lie everywhere. Your relationships with others, lies. The education you' re giving, your petty conventions, lies. our learning, lies. Your theories, your art, lies. Your social life, your family life, all lies. And what you think of yourself, lies too.

But you don't stop from what you're doing or from what you're saying, because you believe in you. You have to stop inside and observe. Observe without prejudice. While accepting for a time this idea of lies. And if you observe in this manner, paying of yourself, without self-pity, by giving all your false riches for one moment of reality, maybe someday you'll see all of a sudden something you have never saw in you before. You will see you are someone else from what you thought you are. You will see that you are two. One that is not, but takes the place and play the other's role. And the one that is, but so weak, so inconsistent, that just brought forth it disappears immediately. It cannot stand the lies. The smallest lie kills it. It doesn't fight, it does not resist, it is vanquished in advance.

Learn to look until you have observed the difference between your two natures, until you have seen the lies, the impostor in you. When you will see your two natures, that day, in you, the truth will be born. [Intro to a meeting from September, 1941: Premiere Initiation, par G.I. Gurdjieff Question de Gurdjieff (no 50) ed. Albin Michel, 1989, p.34-35]

And that is what happened during that period from the dream of The Kiss in March, to the moment when I realized that everything I had ever believed in was a lie, and I was being asked by the universe if I was willing to pay everything. And pay I did; in advance. And during the period following my separation, as my energy was no longer being drained daily, the manifestation in the body was the evidence of the price I was paying. Everything in my physical system cried out against this view of the world of human affairs, the view of predators and prey, and I wept tears of blood and pus from my eyes to the point that I nearly lost my sight altogether.

Continue to Page 93

The owners and publishers of these pages wish to state that the material presented here is the product of our research and experimentation in Superluminal Communication. We invite the reader to share in our seeking of Truth by reading with an Open, but skeptical mind. We do not encourage "devotee-ism" nor "True Belief." We DO encourage the seeking of Knowledge and Awareness in all fields of endeavor as the best way to be able to discern lies from truth. The one thing we can tell the reader is this: we work very hard, many hours a day, and have done so for many years, to discover the "bottom line" of our existence on Earth. It is our vocation, our quest, our job. We constantly seek to validate and/or refine what we understand to be either possible or probable or both. We do this in the sincere hope that all of mankind will benefit, if not now, then at some point in one of our probable futures.

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