THE GREAT WORK OF LIBERATION by C.B. Willis (C) Copyright by C.B. Willis, 1995-1996. All rights reserved. The Great Work of Liberation, also known as "the Work," involves two aspects: 1) liberation FROM the limitations of social and personal conditioning, and 2) liberation TO the life of conscious spirit, the life of creative spirit unlimited. The goal of the Work is to eliminate the false, and to align with, exemplify, and embody the true. In the tradition of Shankara, we move from the Unreal to the Real. The first part of the Work is purification, therapy, clearing, processwork, healing, personal transformation. The Bhagavad Gita calls this Work the "purification of the sheaths [koshas, vehicles, bodies] toward transparency." The second part of the Work is spiritual (co-)creatorship. The game called "the Work" is to eliminate anything that stands in the way of a free flow of spirit in your life. Clairvoyantly this looks like eliminating grey masses in your space, allowing the gold light of spirit to radiate and prevail everywhere. The Work is a path of accelerated, conscious evolution. Spirit is already perfect on its own plane, however spirit when embodied has challenges of recollection, insight, balance, expression, and manifestation. These challenges are addressed in the Work. Positive change and transformation are always in the direction of more freedom. The question to ask in any situation is, "Where is the freedom?" If there isn't any freedom, you've allowed yourself to fall into a trap. Life itself is free, life is liberty, life is about freedom, greater and greater freedom and proportionate responsibility, more space, more light, more expansiveness, more play, more truth, more beauty, higher ethics. Three Circles Gurdjieff noted three "circles" of Humanity: The outer, exoteric circle that deals with ordinary worldly life, facts, events, objects, emotions, ordinary mind, personality. This is the Domain of Fact. The middle, mesoteric circle deals with philosophy, psychology, religion, the fine arts, social sciences, literature. This is the Domain of Value, where a person has a possibility of coming in contact with, and recollecting, something of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, the Ultimate Ideas. This is the domain where virtues are built in, where good character is formed, where one builds a soul. Some Work begins in this circle, the Work of making key distinctions, avoiding fallacies of logic, orienting one's attention to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, identifying social conditioning, beginning to think for oneself, thus becoming an individual instead of one of the mass. The inner, esoteric circle addresses Spirit and energy as such. This is the Domain of Harmony. Here the person works consciously as spirit, wields energy, consciously creates universes, and harmonizes all parts of the whole. Each inner circle includes understanding and mastery of the outer circles, but the converse is not true. Each circle builds on the the other(s). A person needs to build a solid foundation on the outer two circles before he can enter into the inner circle in a stable and balanced manner, because without the proper foundation, especially in character and ethics, the path may take undesirable and even bizarre turns, and the person may emerge as a caricature of a human being, a mockery of an initiate rather than the real thing, and may be a danger to himself and others. All world religions have an esoteric core of initiates who work with Spirit and energy as such. These initiates form what has been variously called the "Hierarchy," the "Great White Brotherhood" (no connection to racial ancestry), the "Saints," or the Buddhist "Nirmanakayas." This path is open on a gradient scale to all who would qualify at various levels. It is an "inner plane" (invisible dimensions) esoteric path. Its members include both embodied and disembodied spirits. This inner core of initiates is not necessarily to be found in any one or more worldly organizations, although some will find access points there and trace the golden threads of truth they find back to inner plane group(s). Following various yoga paths purify the mind, actions, and emotions while a person communes with God. Jnana yoga is the path of mind, realization, cognition, and the limits of logic. Karma yoga is the path of action, dedication of all action to God, and renunciation of the fruits or results of action. Bhakti yoga is the path of emotion and feeling, love of God, devotion to God, higher aspiration and idealism, feeling as related to the movement of Spirit, and renunciation of worldly emotions and attachments. Yogas may be practiced by those of universal consciousness in conjunction with any world religion, and are not restricted to Hinduism or Vedanta. Metaphysics Aristotle called metaphysics the study of "being qua being" or being as such. But literally, "metaphysics" means "beyond the physical." "Esoteric" means hidden from ordinary sight, but perceptible to spiritual sight or clairvoyance (clear seeing). The esoteric deals with metaphysics, the study of what is beyond the physical, particularly those things related to the workings of spirit and energy. How much of what IS, is metaphysical? How big is the study of metaphysics? How important? I speculate that some 99% of what IS, is metaphysical, for example: ideas, feelings, emotions, ideals, goals, intentions, desire, values, meaning, importance, significance, love, devotion, order, science, harmony, spirit, God, angels, ethics, aesthetics, experience, relationships, context, logical space, quality, quantity/number, substance, life, process, competence, virtue, justice, learning, education, realization, cognition, creation, intuition, knowing, being, impressions, vision, mission, causes, logic, inspiration, beliefs, decisions, conclusions, evaluations, judgments, opinions, solutions, vows, commitment, power, ability, passion, attention, interest, and the abstract notion of matter. Thus metaphysics is a vast subject, an important subject, and deserves much more attention than it gets in just about any sector for being a fundamental and driving subject. Useful Distinctions It's useful to distinguish different aspects of man. The primary distinctions are: spirituality vs. worldliness, the eternal vs. the temporal, the real vs. the unreal. Man's Nature Man's nature according to esoteric psychology includes. - [Universal Spirit (God)]. Man exists within the all-inclusive Life of God, All-that-Is. - Individual spirit. - Soul (the marriage of the spirit and matter in the human being, "residing" in the heart chakra, includes higher emotions). - Personality (the worldly self, the acquired nature, survival strategy, outer expression, image, includes ego-stuff). - Ordinary Mind. - Lower Emotions. - Etheric Body. (the subtle energy counterpart to the physical body). - Physical Body. Definition: The Etheric The "etheric" is the subtlest aspect of the material world, and as such is a key to the interface between spirit and matter. The "etheric body: is also a "subtle body" interface in the human being between emotions/thoughts (kama-manas) and the physical body, and between spirit/soul and the physical body. Definition: Feelings "Feelings" include: the "felt sense" at one's core, etheric body sensations, intuitive impressions, perceptions, emotions, ethical sense, aesthetic sense, sense of truth, appreciation of meaning and nuances of meaning, linguistic intuitions, perception of intention, and physical sensations. In exchanges with others, the correct sense of the word "feeling(s)" must be gotten from linguistic context and perception of intention. If you're uncertain what someone means by the word "feeling," ask rather than guess or assume. When Spirit moves powerfully through a local space, a person may *feel* a "quickening", a felt-sense within their etheric body that announces the presence of Spirit. This quickening is sometimes called "rain." Models of Mind Mind (ordinary mind) is a structure built of 1) elements and 2) their relationships, plus various other epiphenomena, resting on the underlying reality of spiritual consciousness and substance. The structure of mind could be variously modeled as: - a ball of yarn; - an aggregate or set of aggregates (Buddhism); - a web of belief (Quine); - a network of ideas and experiences (Gerbode); - a spherical web; - a tumbleweed; - a tinker-toy construct; - a configuration of sundry odds and ends, such as you'd get from sweeping a neglected garage floor: dust, dirt, animal hair, nuts and bolts, nails, rubber bands, laundry detergent, twigs, fertilizer, pencils, pebbles, cat litter, sawdust, etc. -- the "sculpture" that ends up in your dustpan. - a neural net; (Restak) - a reticulum (Allen); - a jigsaw puzzle, where we fill in "missing pieces" of understanding. Models of "Stuff" Models of emotional "stuff," personal "case" history, "charge," error, trauma, and out-of-balance conditions can piggyback on the models for mind above. A person's "stuff" can be mapped or overlaid onto the basic model and depicted as "lit-up," buzzing areas. "Stuff" can also be depicted as space for the missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle model. Skandhas: The Aggregates Buddhist psychology identifies 5 aggregates [skandhas], the sum total of which is personality. The 5 aggregates are: 1) corporeality or form [rupa]; 2) sensation [vedana]; 3) perception [samjna]; 4) mental formations, including volition, attention, discrimination, effort, concentration, compulsion, emotional states [samskara]; and 5) consciousness [vijnana]. The skandhas are regarded as without essence [anatman], impermanent [anitya], empty [shunya], and full of suffering [dukkha]. They lead to attachments and suffering. From the skandhas of worldly personality [ego], Buddhism derives its theory of no-self [anatman]: the skandhas are impermanent and therefore unreal - a conclusion not unlike that of Buddhism's historical predecessor Hinduism and its western contemporaries, the Greek philosophers. Buddhism further concludes that what we call existence is just a process of mental and physical phenomena to which we become attached and identified, and so we suffer. Religious Diversity in "the Work" For Buddhism, the aggregates taken together form personality, an ephemeral set of experiences and ideas that has no reality in fact. Because of attachments and identifications, we can say that Buddhist personality is analogous to personal case history and the charge on that history. For Buddhism, all of worldly personality or ego has charge or is closely related to charge. Therefore, a goal of Buddhism is realization that there is no-self, that the worldly, ego-self is a delusion. Reality is then at once an emptiness [shunyata, empty of the impermanent], and a suchness [tathata, the absolute true nature of all things, the Buddha nature]. Christians, Moslems, and Hindus would likely call this goal the elimination of worldliness, which clears the way for a free flow of Spirit and allows the Christ consciousness and goodwill to prevail. Discussion of a permanent, eternal self or being [atman, individual spirit] now becomes problematic and difficult to compare across world religions, however we can note that the impersonal Buddha nature of wisdom and compassion is that which knows the impermanence and unreality of all worldly things, and this Buddha nature resides in all beings as the Christ consciousness or Krishna consciousness or Brahman resides in all beings, and is omnipresent. Perception of the scope of "the Work" to be done may differ somewhat from one religion to another. Some may prefer to leave the ordinary mind and worldly personality in place, remove charged areas illogics, dissolve "ego-stuff," relegate ordinary mind and worldly personality to secondary assisting roles, and unfold and express the spiritual nature to its fullest. Other religions, such as Buddhism, have as an agenda to eliminate the ego [defined as personality, skandhas, attachments, identifications] altogether. However, all agree that spiritual life is primary and that worldliness as an orientation or distraction is delusion. "The Work" and Ordinary Mind There are six "Work" tasks regarding ordinary mind [or mental formations]: 1) Remove the charge or upset on charged areas, i.e., areas of trauma, emotional pain or mental confusion; 2) Train the person to see limited cultural programming for what it is, and to see how he has unthinkingly adopted limited programming in the past; 3) Correct specific instances of fallacies of logic and educate regarding logical fallacies; 4) End usurpation by ordinary mind of other aspects of the person, and return ordinary mind to its proper role as an observer of energy and Spirit, with a linguistic competency to be used by Spirit in naming the essence and deep structure of things. 5) Train the person to identify, then remove or transform, abusive/oppressive/suppressive influences in his life. Additionally, train the person to retrieve spiritual substance freely given to abusive individuals or apparently stolen by abusive individuals, or otherwise left by the person in past times and places, and bring it up into present time. This is also the goal of shamanic "soul retrieval." The Work may selectively employ ordinary mind, and consciously align ordinary mind with spiritual mind, in order to accomplish the above Work. Ego "Ego" in this [my] system is defined as the false self, the sum total of ignorance, defendedness, denial, armoring, arrogance, unwillingness, obnoxiousness, rudeness, neglect, lack of caring, selfishness, stubbornness, closed-mindedness, lack of questioning, garrulousness, overbearing, dominating, controlling, manipulating, calculating, strategizing, seducing, abusing, fearful, self-promoting, self-effacing, permissive, insulting, insulted, offensive, offended, separative, personality, ordinary mind, pretense, lies, anger, irritation, image conscious, posturing, how will it look, embarrassment, issues of acceptability, acceptance and approval by others, belonging, low self-esteem, boasting, bragging, personal worth measured by intelligence, accomplishment, looks, deeds, possessions, better-than, unworthy, superiority-inferiority, resistances, stonewalling, hostile, intimidating, destructive. Ego is a phenomenon stemming mostly from personality and ordinary mind, and their tendency to usurp other aspects of a person's nature, especially awareness as spirit, heart/soul, and feelings from core. "Ego stuff" refers to issues involving the ego as described above, that result in upset for self and others. Ego stuff is seen clairvoyantly as "charge" or buzz in the energy field. Working with ego stuff is the battle between the real vs. the unreal, the workable vs. the unworkable, in the human being. The trick is to design or access a weapons system of transformation so sophisticated that eradicating the ego is like the elegance of precision bombing, at the same time strengthening spirit and intuition. The errant ways of ego must first be correctly spotted or identified, and while some ego stuff can be knocked out quickly in chains, like carpet bombing, other ego stuff must be hit on repeatedly for many years, like chipping away at a concrete block. The trick to working with ego stuff is the person themselves seeing it for what it is: ego stuff. They have to get a "taste" and a "feel" for ego stuff, and how ego stuff comes across to others as well, why it ruins relationships. Once recognized for what it is and then named, ego stuff is much easier to eliminate. "Oh, THAT'S ego stuff! Hmmmm.... OK, I got that ." Chief Feature "Chief feature" is the central false personality characteristic around which the rest of ego forms. Chief feature is a core piece of "survival strategy," what the person feels he has to be and do in order to survive and get what he wants. There is one primary chief feature, and perhaps two or three secondary chief features. The Work focuses on identifying and addressing chief feature early on for two reasons: 1) Work on chief feature(s) will take a long time, relatively speaking, to be effective, so it's well to identify chief feature(s) and start work on it early, so that the various aspects of transformational work will come together and complete at roughly the same time, and 2) making headway on eradicating chief feature(s) makes all other issues much simpler to resolve, often allowing other issues to fall down like dominoes. Chief feature may be likened to that block of concrete that takes persistent efforts over many years to be effectively resolved. Insight alone will be insufficient to resolve it. Chief feature is very entrenched as a core survival strategy and it will need to be hit on directly and indirectly from many angles to be eradicated. Head, Heart, and Core There are three main operating centers for purposes of the Work: head, heart, and core. "Head" refers to the consciousness of the individual spirit, which is normally placed at the center of the head, but which is in fact non-spatial and is not restricted to any location. As spirit interfaces with the etheric body, it activates the crown chakra, the ajna center (third eye), alta major center (base of the skull), and higher centers above the head. "Head" does not refer to ordinary mind, but rather to the higher mind of spirit, and the abilities to be, know, and look/observe. Seen clairvoyantly, the individual spirit often appears as a spark of radiant golden light. (Note: there's an expression "in your head" which refers to the center of gravity being in the head, as opposed to core. It is a derogatory term, a reminder to reassess center of gravity, and reorient to core. It is possible to learn to split attention and "be at core" and also be spiritually aware ("head" and/or "heart") at the same time. But to be "in one's head" is an undesirable, ungrounded, out-of-balance state.) "Heart" refers to the soul, which "resides" in the heart chakra. The heart does not refer to the personal emotions or sympathy, but rather to the higher emotions of love, compassion, joy, bliss, aspiration, sense of meaning and purpose. The heart is sometimes called the "fair witness." Seen clairvoyantly, the heart chakra may appear as a rose or lotus. "Core" is a spiritual-psychic-etheric intelligence center in the lower torso. Core is the etheric counterpart to the enteric nervous system. Core is commonly known as the home of "gut level" instinctive intuition and "street smarts." Core has also been called a "bullshit detector" or a "sleaze detector". Core connects us with what's true or false about the physical and social world around us at an instinctive and spiritual level, and allows us to read the energy on our physical and social world as it relates to our power, well-being, and survival. Many of the problems a person brings to therapy are problems because the person ignored information and feelings from core to some degree, and now he's paying the price for that denial and turning away from his own intuitive information, turning away from spirit. Much of healing consists in spotting when he got intuitive information, what tempted him to ignore it, the effort to suppress the information and stuff the feelings, the rationalization or story he told himself when he suppressed it and went up "into his head," and the consequences of that suppression. Seen clairvoyantly, core appears as a soft reddish, resilient, hollow sphere, like a big red fuzzy basketball. Core extends from the bottom of the sternum to the bottom of the torso. It resides within the etheric body, and extends slightly outward into the aura field, so is approximately 12" in diameter in an adult. Core incorporates four centers in the etheric body: the root chakra (grounding and security), the sacral center (intimacy, sex, the generations), the solar plexus (power and feeling), and the spleen (distributor of life energy). While core incorporates these chakras, it is a gestalt that exceeds them individually and together. Note that working with core as a unit does not overstimulate the lower centers, but instead tends toward naturally harmonizing, balancing, and cleaning up their functioning. We use attention differently at head, heart, and core. Each area is useful for certain kinds of perception and action. A person will have one of the three operating easily and most naturally for him, but facility in all three areas is required in the Work. Such facility can be trained or developed. Intuition training focuses attention on head, heart, and core to facilitate perception and action. Such training is initiatory, in that spiritual identity is enhance, and perception and abilities are expanded and become more inclusive. As the Work progresses, students notice interrelations among head, heart, and core. It may be observed that within head, heart, or core there are also the seeds of the others. For example, core contains the seeds of heart and head within it. Thus, with the interrelations of head, heart, and core, we can notice an interactive intelligence and communication that operates faster and faster to produce an internal coherence, resonance, flow, a greatly enhanced intuition, and a wisdom-in-action that moves out to engage easily with the world. Initiation into each of these operating centers is like learning to drive a car or play an instrument, far better with lessons, except that in this case you're learning to "drive" or direct energy in your etheric vehicle and "play" your etheric instrument. Attention Intuition training of head, heart, and core involves various meditation practices and uses of attention. There's a saying in the Work that "everything is attention," and how attention is used. A key question to ask is, "What did you notice about ...?" Repeat that question until you think you're out of answers. Then ask the question once or twice more to catch more answers both subtle and obvious. You will be surprised at how much you do in fact notice but may not give yourself credit for perceiving, or may not share with others for various reasons. You're already very intuitive - intuition comes with being a spirit. You may have denied your intuitive impressions because much of our culture has no place or words for these impressions, or it's considered not polite to notice what's really going on, much less talk about it. As such, people's apparent lack of intuition is tacit cultural programming to NOT perceive, to NOT look, to NOT notice, to NOT talk about. It's a short step from perceiving to speaking. Articulating what you notice is a step in integrating the intuition that is your spiritual birthright. Truth Spirits have an enormous affinity for the truth. They naturally gravitate to the truth of any situation, unless there is social conditioning or perverse logic that says to ignore or ridicule the truth. Love of truth is the key to salvation for a spirit, and will lead to freedom and spiritual power. Suffering Buddhism seeks to eliminate suffering by blowing out the fires of desire. Desire not, suffer not. If we grant for a moment that no-suffering may be the end of the path, then it is not the beginning or the middle. If someone were to try to eliminate desire directly, they would repress or attempt to stop the life impulse within them and defeat their own purpose. All portions of the path need to be experienced fully. While some things can be fully understood through direct insight, the way out of most worldly suffering is to exhaust it, complete it, go right into the middle of it and then out the other side, free as a bird. The sum total of worldliness is exhausted over lifetimes and is not likely to be completed in just one lifetime. The accelerated path works with the essence of desires, not the form of desires, thus we find out the truth of our desires, exhaust the forms, and become free much faster than if we repressed or resisted desire. Gurdjieff noted that there are two kinds of suffering: necessary suffering, and unnecessary suffering. Necessary suffering includes grieving for lost loved ones, occasional physical pain, and also the striving and extraordinary special efforts of the accelerated path of initiates. Unnecessary suffering includes suffering from ignorance, conditioning, lifestyle, illness that could be cured, grinding poverty, unwanted or ill-timed pregnancies, misdirected will, and arbitrary group agreements such as economies, governments, famines, and wars. I speculate that some 90-99% of the suffering of Humanity today is unnecessary suffering. Fruits of the Work The purpose of meditation is to know God, to commune with God, to know oneself as spirit. All other results are by-products and are not to be sought for their own sake. Increased intelligence and stress relief are common, as well as some issues clarification, discernment and intuition. Mostly meditation orients a person spiritually and other manifestations derive from this. The result of the Work as a whole is a spiritually awake individual, a virtuous, balanced and capable human being, and a person who is welcome everywhere as a true friend and contributor. Much of the Work of removing past conditioning and clearing up old issues involves attending to core and spirit. The creation aspect of the Work deeply engages the heart, the heart's desire, and values. Creation secondarily involves the head with creative ideas based on the heart's desire and values, and core in engaging with the world. Action requires core, also known as "the moving center," where we move out into the world, engage with the world, act with wisdom and ease, as if we were flowing along a river. The state of "flow" engages head, heart, and core in a harmonious balance for the task at hand and enables more-or-less effortless and fulfilling activity. Both core and heart are "unsophisticated" and do not doubt themselves, doubting being a peculiarity of ordinary mind. There is an immediate access to truth at core and heart that is most refreshing, a little-known oasis in the world. What we call "authenticity" and "transparency" are the virtues of deep honesty, sincerity and love, signaling the ability to be at core and heart at will, as appropriate to the situation. Good communications and trust are impossible without authenticity and transparency. Authenticity produces a very satisfying feeling at heart and a solid feeling at core for the person himself, and it produces an almost palpable sense of integrity and trustworthiness to others present, which invites them to be authentic as well by example. In "the Work," people learn how to tell the truth. They learn how to tell a deeper and deeper truth, in a graceful way that others can receive in the spirit in which it's given. People may begin the Work with varying degrees of sincerity, but even those who begin with extreme sincerity and virtue need to learn how to be authentic. They learn to take off the layers of truth, get out of their heads and into their heart and core, and get down to bottom line personal truth, absolute truth, energy and spirit. They learn to speak, listen and live from heart and core. When people first begin to tell a deeper truth, they may feel awkward and uncomfortable, but in the presence of a supportive group with a good teacher or group therapist, awkward feelings soon evolve to a grace, confidence, and dignity that are a beauty to behold. Normally such grace and ease in telling the truth at a deep level in any circumstance is best developed in groupwork, and goes hand in hand with chipping away at the ego over time, since ego is so defended it must save face and cannot appear vulnerable, so prevents a full telling of deep truth. Only when a person is authentic will he be rightly prepared to wield spiritual substance and the power of the word as appropriate to the circumstances. Both Ends of the Stick To use an analogy of a stick, a person on the path of accelerated development needs to Work "both ends of the stick" concurrently: 1) PURIFICATION: remove limited conditioning, ego-stuff, illogic and other false ideas; remove old and outworn energies; rectify karmic injustice and incompleteness, and 2) CREATION: unfold awareness of self as spirit, and refine the process of conscious creation. To pursue a spiritual path without extensive purification is to run aground due to "dirt in your spiritual gas tank." To pursue purification without a teacher, a workgroup or spirituality is to miss the inner workings of the purification process, and to have a more difficult time with social integration and creation later. Therefore, "the Work" pursues purification and creation concurrently for best results. [References: BHAGAVAD GITA. Katherine Tingley, MYSTERIES OF THE HEART DOCTRINE, 1902. Alice A. Bailey, collected works. P.D. Ouspensky, THE FOURTH WAY, etc. J.G. Bennett, DRAMATIC UNIVERSE Series, DEEPER MAN, etc. W.V.O. Quine, THE WEB OF BELIEF. Web model of mind/belief. Irving M. Copi, INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC. Basic logical fallacies. Sydney Jourard, THE TRANSPARENT SELF. Eugene Gendlin, FOCUSING. Peter Koestenbaum, collected works. Authenticity. John Pierrakos, CORE ENERGETICS. Frank Gerbode, MD, BEYOND PSYCHOLOGY. Network model of mind, and trauma resolution. Guenther and Kawamura, BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY. Psychology and ethics. Fischer-Schreiber, Ehrhard, and Diener, SHAMBHALA DICTIONARY OF BUDDHISM AND ZEN. Skandhas, etc. J.R. Allen, MIND MATTERS. Reticular model of mind. Daniel Goleman, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE. Richard Restak, MD, BRAINSCAPES. Neural networks and circuits.] C.B. Willis, MA Northern California March 1995 Revised August 21, 1996 http://www.geocities.com/athens/parthenon/1802 --------------------------------------------------------------------- | cbwillis@netcom.com | "Values are the infrastructure | | | upon which civilization | | | will be reinvented." - CBW | ---------------------------------------------------------------------