=kit010sa
Summary Commentary with Witty Quips by me, sa, of PVK KIT 010
KIT 10 - What is Spirituality?

To work toward 'awakening in life', consider, while you are in
seculuded meditation context, how you would deal with some of your
problems.

#L2
The is a foreshadow of an approach that PVK presented in
Zenith 1994, and which I transcribed under the rather naive
title, 'New trail up the mountain'.
#L3

It seems that, will_he__nill_he , one has no choice but
to apply meditation to one's problems.
#L1

PVK remarks:

"The neo-Platonic
philosopher, Plotinus, once said:  that which one fails to intuit
in contemplation, one seeks to experience in the environment."
(PVK KIT 009)
#L2
Cf. Jung, 'If you do not acknowlege your Shadow, you will
later confront it as Fate. 
(kit009_1)
#L1

PVK then addresses the problem of defending onself in everyday
life from from the egos of others.

He refers to such people as "bullies".
(kit009_2)


PVK does seem in this KIT to be trying to anticpate in detail 
the self_doubts that mureeds will find in trying to bring his
teachings to bear on the interpersonal hassles of everyday life.
In particular, in trying to invoke non_egoistic universal Power to
defend oneself against the ego_ism of others.

So this KIT presents quite a complex dialectic, with a lot of
back_and_forth__ing.

================================================================
*** %%% ZOWIE FOR HOWIE
============================================================ =====
                       
COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

(These notes get even more jumbled and repetitious than usual, but
there is some good material intermixed here, and I wanted to get
it down, and then toss it down where it won't bother simple honest
folk.

It don't help that the 2nd draft, with lots of added remarks, is
intermixed with the lst draft.

For more apologies and apolgiae, go to botdoc -- 'botdoc' means --
the bottom of this document  

CAVEAT:  There is some dark stuff in these notes to this doc,
which I'd not want to inflict on anyone.

In general, that's showed over to Layout 7, which is #L7

But that don't help much, because in ASCII it all goes back to
Flush_left.

Sorry.


-----------------------------------



(kit009_1)
TEXT:
#L2
Cf. Jung, 'If you do not acknowlege your Shadow, you will
later confront it as Fate. 


#L3
And I suppose that is Mick Jagger's song, for The
Rolling Stones, 'Sympathy for the Devil' -- on the first
Rolling Stones album
#L1


 I want to highlight my distinction between Destiny, which
appertains to Spinoza's Emotions, and to Dharma, and to Free Will
--- 
-- verus Fate, which appertains to Spinozaa's Passions, and to
Karma, and to Determinism.

#L2
This remark by Plotinus seems to me to foreshaw Jung's dictu,
often quoted by PVK, and AoK, 'If you do not acknowlege and
confront your Shadow, you will later encounter it as Fate.'
#L3
And that is precisely the Tachunun, in daily davening: 
Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, but into the
hands of man let me not fall.

 
#L3
and I had supposed PVK picked Jung's remark on Shadow 
up from AoK 

-- AoK has told the story, in a Zenith leccture I think,
that when he first met PVK he asked him, 'But what about
Shadow', and PVK replied, 'Oh, we don't worry about --
or maybe AoK said that PVK said, 'We don't concern
outselves with that'.
#L4
But Chandra once remarked to me, this would be in
1999, that it was more from TIK than from AoK that
PVK learned to add the psychologic dimension -- 
#L5
Chandra was a Member of the Abode in that
period,  and then married to ZR, but I don't
know how reliable her recollections are.
#L1

I (sa) say:
If one acknowleges that one may seek on an unconscous level, even
seek things unconsciously that one would consciously reject -- eg
one's own death -- then this remark by Plotinus presages Jung's
famous dictum, often quoted by PVK and AoK too, 'That in oneself
which one does not acknowlege and confront, one will encounter as
Fate.'           
#L2

(The exact quote slips my mind at the moment -- ah, the
pitiful wisdom of age. -- 
#L1

That was Jung on his notion of 'Shadow'.

But I think Jung may be rather too neat , too dichotomous, 

I think that what Jung is presenting, rathaer than surpassing and
supplanting Freud, is maybe merely a sketch of the subconscious,
too much a simplification of Freud -- 

I think that maybe Jung is a presage of the shlock Teutonic
neo_paganism slopped out by Wagner and swilled up by the Nazi's --

#L2

'If you do not confront your Shadow, you will encounter it as
Fate.' -- Well, that's closer.  

But Jung was too Aristotelian:

I want to say:
One's Shadow as the Vice -- of excess or defect or either or
both, Jung did not specify -- of one's Virtu -- 

that is, of one's Virtu in the Platonic sense; 
one's excellence, really -- is that the Greek   arete -- 

it seems, one's 'Soul'
where the term 'Soul' is used somehow in contradistinction
and even opposition to one's 'Psyche' --
#L3

and that Soul/Psyche dichotomy is much too Cartesian -- 
#L4

Soul and Psyche as discrete, rather counterposed --
Reifications, really.  

Soul as Essence, Psyche as "the quick" -- 

Psyche as 'the quick' -- as 'Existence' -- 

Soul as static, Psyche as dynamic -- 
#L5

but here we are merely playing little
conceptual juggling games with abstractions --

#L6

we might envision these 'conceptual
abstractions' as little conceptual cubes
in simple primary colours -- 
#L1
[ The following repeats a point I made above, but maybe here I add
more points, and I don't want to take the time now to consolidate
these various versions; and I'd rather put up with repetitin than
risk omission ]:


 I want to highlight my distinction between DESTINY, 
which appertains to Spinoza's Emotions, and to Dharma, and to Free
Will --- 

-- verus FATE, 
which appertains to Spinoza's Passions, and to Karma, and to
Determinism.
 
Like I say, Fate is the default option.  If you don't take control
of your own life, your Fate will prevail.

And that is also Din, Judgement; 
where Destiny is Chesed -- Grace, Loving_Kindness.                


And of course Destiny is also the revelation at Sinai after the
redemption and liberation from Egypt.

And incidentally, what Jesus gives the goyim --  we already got
that stuff when Heaven 
#L2

('Heaven' is my circumlocution; my frummie friends would say
-- 'HaSHEM' -- but as I say, that sounds ttoo anthropomorphic
for my taste -- but what the heck, if the Catholics insist on
that notion of the 'Trinity', and if they persist in their
Triumphalist gambit of supposing that mercy, Chesed, Grace,
inheres only in the Second Being of the Trinity -- that is,
in Jesus Christ -- then even the quasi_anthropomorphis of the
frummie baal tchuvas is a useful antidote, even a necessay
one -- "don't bother us, all you Jesus Freaks, we don't need
you, because we were 'Saved' -- 'Redeemed from Egypt', as we
call it in our quaisi_historical conceptual system -- about
1700 years before your boy ever put down his carpentry tools
and walked down the hill from Matereth.
redeemed us from Egypt.  
#L1


And that is why it is central to Judaism , always to remember that
were slaves in Egypt, and liberated by Divine Grace.
#L2

So don't forget it or we'll feed you to the Jesus Freaks, and
then you'll float down the Jordan into the Dead Sea and turn
into a pickled herring.
#L3

I mean, they ain't got nothing they ain't taken from us,
so don't go join them or you will be one lonely little
puppie_dog, 
#L4
as_it_is_said, 'With one tochas you can't dance at
two Weddings.'

And everyone knows, 
#L5

even Jesus said it, though we said it first in
Shir haShirim, Song of Songs -- 

what is the Wedding -- 

it is the wedding of Man to the Divine.  
The Shekinah, if you like.  
#L6

Islam is helpfully explicit with that
imagery; 

though they got rather off_track with
that 70 virgins bit.  

I mean really, one virgin is more than
aggravation enough.  
#L7

Somebody in Israel should make a
movie about the Palestinian Martyr, 

** CAVEAT:  THIS IS PRETTY DARK
STUFF, SO YOU BETTER SCROLL PAST IT
TO THE NEXT LEFT MARGIN:

as they call those guys who blow
rusty nuts and bolts though women
and children and querrulous old
kakers on a city bus 

-- I mean, the rich don't have to 
take buses, they have their own
cars, and maybe drivers too -- 

-- and even a toothless old kaker
with his fly open and piss on his
shoes should not have to spend the
last decade or so of life waking
around with a few nuts and bolts in
his guts or his brain -- 

I'm not bullshitting, not much
anyhow, "read all about it" (USA
1940's) on 
www. terror-victims.org.il

"the living will envy the dead", as
they used to say of the survivors of
a nuclear war, although most of us
soooner or later do anyhow -- $

-- I mean, this self_styled 
civilization doesn't even allow its
citizens a decent painless death,
unless they go out and murder
someone -- 

and the way they used to kill
convicts in the USA sure as hell
wasn't painless -- hanging, and
electorcuting, and don't suppose the
gas chamber was all that nice either
-- cyanide must hurt like hell --
and now, with those obsence lethal
injections -- and what that does to
the fantasies of real hospital
patients I'd hate to know --
especially the mentally stressed
ones -- 

-- anyhow, whatever it is, it sure
as hell ain't decent -- a crowd of
spectators behind a glass partition,
half of them relishing every minute
of it -- 

I mean, at least the heathen Chinese
send 'em off with just one quick
shot to the back of the head, and
don't make a public spectatcle of
you -- 
#l3

Oy, it's getting on toward Shabat and my toes are cold
too -- 
#l4

Well, "Keep on Truckin'" as Mr. Natural used to say
-- that's Robert Crumb comics -- a looney,, but
right in tune, on a few notes anyhow -- 

*** CAVEAT: HERE'S A CONTINUATION OF DARK STUFF, TO
SCROLL PAST IT TO THE NEXT LEFT MARGIN -- 



they can be wracked --- 

really, as if they were on a
torture_rack -- 

with pain for years, and the
hospital won't give them opiates for
fear they might become junkies -- 

mazaltov, and so what, they are then
going to go out on the streets and 
rob liquor stores and pawnshops to
support their habit maybe -- 
-- and worse yet, break into ranch
houses in the suburbs and steal the
TV set --     
#l3
OK, IT'S SAFE TO COME OUT NOW, MORE OR LESS:

Here's the end of a sketch for an Israeli movie of the
Palestinian Martyr who gets his 70 virgins and would
like to give back at least 69, you should pardon the
expression:

#l7

who gets to heaven and is ushered
into the harem with 70 virgins, and
they are all screaming at each other
and stealing each other's hair
curlers and eating chocolates and
talking on their cellphones, and
making snide remarks about boys --- 


-------------------


#l3 

Here's more weird stuff, but its maybe useful for
something:


Rosa stops by.  My bed, which was barely large enough
for me, becomes commodious for the two of us, we can
sleep without touching.

There is a way to expland space.  

I learned it in that holding cell on Rodos, where there
was not even room enough to lie down.

Rosa leaves, to walk down the hill, in a heavy
snowstorm.  

I can let my aura out again.  

But with no_one to be gentle to, my aura, or whatever it
is,  starts to rage.  

The shallow gentle dreams are replaced by deep
nightmares, childhood angers.  I awaken panting.  

Or maybe it my bruised big toe, from walking dwon from
almost Furka Pass to Realp, 6.5 km. in an hour and a
half, pushing all the way, to get down before dark, as I
did with only about 10 minutes leeway.

The room was too warm with the heater on full.  

As the snow started falling, this night from about 14
below to only minus 10.

Or maybe I got that nightmare when Honest George's Manzo
with Polenta kicked in. 

I mean, what's in the Beef bought and chopped and spiced
and sold at ten times the price by Honest George you
would maybe rather not know.

I have marked the Butcher Shop he buys at, and would not
go in the door without a Chemical Decontamination Kit.

Well, those were my inredients for dreams or nightmares,
far too far from whatever PVK is speaking of, in KIT 008
I think it was.

---------------------------------------------------------
------
#L1

OK, IT'S SAFE TO COME BACK TO THE PLAYGROUND NOW 


TEXT:
He refers to such people as "bullies".
(kit009_2)
(kit009_2)
And that is the oath that he asks, at least I heard it at Zenith
1999 (or maybe 1998)  of someone wanting to be initiated as a
Knight -- though it seems that he initiates only children as
Knights --  he asks, will you defend -- people, I suppose he says
-- "against bullies".

More often he calls upon mureeds to foreswear guile as
precondition of meditation -- as part of the initial purification
process.  He adds a warming -- if your forswear guile, you will
have foresworn all your defenses  -- but then he adds, only
hinting of it -- but you will find you have other defenses 
#L2
And that would seem to be Jesus remark, "I send you out as
sheep among wolves", and also Jesus remark, so not worry how
you will answer those who challenge your belief, "for the
words will be given to you"
#L1
===============================================================

sa, Campra, 31 Dec '05  -- 03:12 AM -- the 6 lights of Chanukah
Day 6 have burned down and been put away -- it's Shabat. but
better the sin of typing on a computer on Shabat, than lying in
bed trying to fight off nightmares -- 

I apologize for all the junk in this set of notes, but I really
don't want to try to tidy up that mess now, I'd rather pack this
up and shut it down and maybe take a break.

================================================================