Sam! We are playing in the same field of resonance! So glad to have such a brilliant companion in this magically lucid and mysterious place.
Aurobindo’s work has impacted me in physiological ways that I think are still reverberating. I also am feeling an incredibly strong resonance with the naming of the Dark Feminine and hope Schuyler continues to expound on this topic. Thank you for sharing your understanding of Gebser and his work.
Yes, I sense that this project is working on bringing greater consciousness to collective fractal bloodlines and opening closed looped systems of human relationships and lineages to new information (and composting stuff that no longer serves) that allows for more harmonic patterns to evolve. So exciting to be feeling this and having it change my body chemistry, which is simultaneously my ancestor’s and the Earth’s chemistry.
Ooh thank you to you and Sam, both for highlighting (so to speak) the dark feminine. Yes, there is more to come. And your interest encourages me to forefront what was a bit backgrounded. That's very cool. Something is already shifting as I think about that. A scene is arising....a memory, a KEY.
Hello again, lovely Schuyler. I'm a little out of step in that I read the first few chapters, then missed a few, then picked it up again. I apologize therefore if this is a discussion that's already been had, but I wanted to ask if there's a reason you've fictionalized yourself and your story, in the sense of writing about yourself in the third person. I ask because I'd like to make the case for writing it in the first person, as the memoir that it really is...
When Martha Beck first wrote Expecting Adam, her memoir about expecting her Down syndrome son, she wrote it as a novel. For whatever reason, creating that distance was initially helpful, until everyone working on the project recognized that since it was really a memoir, that it would be most powerful as one. I don't know if you've read that book, but it's extraordinarily magical, to the extent that when I read it, not only do I experience full body chills at regular intervals, but the sorts of magical things that happen to her in the book start to happen to me in my life for as long as I'm reading it. It's a beautiful book for many reasons, but the most powerful thing about it as far as I'm concerned is that it is tantamount to being proof that magic is real. Had she published it as a novel it would have seemed like... a nice idea, but just fiction.
What I sense in your story is the potential for something similar. As a reader, I stand to gain validation for my own experiences of magic by reading a first person account of yours. If I think S is a character you've made up, I lose that... and it's the thing I want the most. Even if you tell me S is you, if she's written in the third person, she comes across as fictional, and I lose that connection with the events as being real.
I don't read fiction anymore, or very rarely, because it no longer gives me what I'm looking for. But I devour spiritual memoirs. I recognize of course that the Katherine parts involve some poetic license, but I think the hybrid form is exciting and beautiful.
There have been times where I've had the peculiar feeling that I may have been Jane Austen in a previous life, the thought that my engagement with her work might go beyond that of just being a fan. It's riveting to me to read your account of this experience, as well as the descriptions of what spiritual experiences feel like in the body (I didn't comment on it that week, but there was a chapter that ended with a description of an energy rising up through Katherine and changing her whole world and I thought yes, this, I'd read fiction if it was like this, because this has been my experience, and most fiction doesn't cater to me and my experiences at all).
Again, I apologize if this discussion was already had. And I must also slightly apologize for being so forceful in making my case. As always, I trust that you'll let it float by if it doesn't resonate for you.
Dear Emma, I am writing quickly tonight after posting a long chapter. Please know that I read your comment and have really been thinking about it. I made the switch (which you may now know) in Chapter 6 when another reader suggested it. I have enjoyed it ever since, but have also wondered about the distance the third person can offer.
I put it on the back burner because this week's focus was Katherine, but as I get into the next chapter (chapter 12) where we return to my life and times, I will make a call. I am leaning towards sticking with the third person. This surprises me. But, when I feel into it the main thing is...I DO feel Katherine writing my parts with me and to use "I" would be limiting what was essentially a "we" during that time. I also realize in playing with tense and person, that I feel so different, so essentially different now than I did then that I don't really resonate fully with the "I" who is having the experience. It's easier for me to relate to "S." I can have compassion for S where she didn't have it for herself. And that feels really important to the healing process.
Thank you for the Martha Beck reference. I now want to read that book. And thank you for making your case. I will continue to play with it as I prepare for next week! We shall see...
It has been profound, to say the least, witnessing the way this whole writing project has been unfolding. First, I want to share that, as a man, I’ve been increasingly drawn into the recognition that I have my own complex relationship with the Dark Feminine in certain modes of her expression—a relationship that I am still very much in the process of working with. I don’t yet know how, but I imagine that this may be a catalytic read in relation to that process. Only time will tell, though.
Secondly, I will yet again morph into my Gebserian caricature-self for the sake of fashioning my own stylistic response to your yearning to be a writer of consequence, making a case for why I feel that what your are doing here is of deep value.
Gebser, after all, is one of many “big” personalities to inflect the unfolding spiritual mystery into a powerfully individuated articulation. Gurdjieff, of course, was another. Whereas you clearly have a strong karmic tie to the latter, I have sensed I have one with the former.
Gebser wasn't without his own karmic threads. Later in life, he claimed to have found an explanation for his own karmic task “in the fact that I was in some way brought into the extremely powerful spiritual field of force radiating through Sri Aurobindo.” Aurobindo, as you may know, enacted his own sacred marriage—a consort relationship with Mirra Alfassa, more widely known as "The Mother," which was, at least by all accounts I know of, only consummated spiritually in the subtle realms (but, in light of your work, who can be absolutely sure of such things, in the end?)
Anyway—here is a deep part of why I find this endeavor to be consequential. Gebser articulated several features of what he considered to be the dawning integral structure of consciousness which is currently struggling to be born—a spiritual task requiring our participation. Gebser sensed that "the spiritual" would find a new level of concrete realization for humanity through this mutation in consciousness.
Here are a number of those features—each of which I recognize to be weaving through the content, and process, of your writing journey here:
-the spiritual
-the supersession of the ego
-the realization of time-freedom
-the recognition of energy
-the mastery of movement
-the supersession of patriarchy
-the acquisition of intensity
-the transformation of the creative inceptual basis
I don’t want to prattle on too much further here by elaborating on the places that I see these elements either being included, or realized, in the midst of this work (many are no doubt obvious). I’ll just let it stand. However, given that Gebser transmitted these as urgent spiritual tasks for the times in which we live, I would say that what you are doing is of profound value.
One last thing I find quite interesting: you agreed to gift Katherine the fruits of your spiritual work in exchange for her assistance with your calling to write. I’m finding it so easy to imagine that this writing project itself—at once a profound spiritual accomplishment and an excellent literary achievement—becomes a kind of "mysterium coniunctionis," a subtle circuit fulfilling both souls’ ends of the agreement simultaneously.
Just one take—offered in the spirit of divine play.
A deep bow of appreciation for you both. Sam, the list you offer is like a driving manual. I find it SO INCREDIBLY HELPFUL. I've been listening to an amazing podcast called The Emerald (do you know it?) and the episode this morning was about mapping states of consciousness. The point I was taking away is that in the West we often say the spiritual experience is ineffable--it can't be captured in words. And yet, all across the east and in shamanic cultures, these maps are quite clear with distinct features and landmarks common to any man. Like the Bardos described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. VERY clear. And I think of the Flower Ornament Scripture, Avatamsaka Sutta (Thomas Cleary's 800-page translation!!!), where realm upon realm of the Buddhaverse is described in precious detail. Fruits and delights so scrumptious you want to eat them, but don't eat the food from the spirit world, lest you get stuck there...POINT BEING...we do know these states and places, we do know the rules. We do know where we're going. It's mainly a matter of doing it (HAHAHA Nike knew: JUST DO IT). So, I have been just doing it because the feedback loop is so encouraging. What you say is so true:
- yes these are "urgent spiritual tasks"
- yes it is "a spiritual task requiring our participation"
Thank you for your recognition and encouragement. I really take that in. That you and others "get it" means the world to me. Next chapter I will muse about the importance in feminine healing and healing the feminine (in all and everywhere) is the need for the process to be witnessed. The need...for an audience. There is so much of the shame frequency in the feminine wounds--the silencing, the secrecy, the suppression--that we must bring it into the light. The great irony is (is it an irony?) that this bringing into the light feels so counter intuitive now. We're so long gone in the feminine secrecy space that it all feels like it SHOULD be private. Like S's reaction to the Sufi dancer...the rage that the young woman publicly enjoying her sensuality provoked. It was THIS! Yes, S wanted to be dancing, not watching (as did Katherine). BUT also, she was enraged by the audacity, the way this woman was breaking the silent agreement of feminine trauma that we shall and will keep our desires, our sensuality, our indiscretions, private.
But, I digress....or jump ahead of myself.
Yes...I found that promise to Katherine verbatim in one of the journals. I winced a little to find it. I had forgotten that I did indeed make the promise, the commitment, the vow. And until now, I had not followed through. She nearly gave up on me, I hate to think the karmic consequence of it :) So, yes I promised her the healing she needed in exchange for help writing. And I am getting it. She is a great writer. I started listening to the audiobook of Bliss and Other Stories. It's so charming, so artful. She's a master.
I just love what you're bringing to the process. I'm so grateful. Should I say WE are? I wonder what Gebser thought of Gurdjieff.
Yes, perhaps it can be a bit lazy to write off just how far we can "eff the ineffable" as far as differentiating spiritual realms in all their variety. I will check out the Emerald, and have yet to get to Chapter 11 (have been feverishly dissertating).
To the lats piece there, Gebser makes no mention of Gurdjieff in his only major work that has yet been translated into English, and I am not aware of any instances where they directly acknowledge one another.
However, Cynthia Bourgeault, the eclectic Christian mystic and contemplative, has been making those links recently, emphasizing that the Gurdjieff Work seems to be a particularly effective pathway for preparing THE BODY for the energetic intensification that will accompany—*is* accompanying—integral consciousness mutation.
Here are a few very brief articles, in the event they spark your interest.
Ooooooh yes....I will dig in here. I haven't read Cynthia, yet. But, I like her line of thought and where she seems to be coming from. These will be helpful. I've been shocked by my experience of Gurdjieff's work NOW (versus a decade ago when I was first introduced). I can see that he was early in understanding trauma, somatic storing of trauma in the body and the theory of parts. I love what you say about the G work being a "pathway for preparing THE BODY for the energetic intensification that will accompany—*is* accompanying—integral consciousness mutation." YES. I think that was part of what it did for me. And for whatever reason - this has been my soul's great interest in this life: restoring and rebuilding the subtle body to the place where it can hold all of the light, awareness, prana, Shakti we need for this transformation of consciousness within and on the planet. The Tibetans call it the Vajra body (indestructible body). I've had to learn this of necessity - literally to NOT break, crack, come unhinged at the sheer force of the energies I've encountered. The way you write it here somehow gives me another facet, or reflection point. Thank you.
I think you'll like chapter 11 - there's a bit more about G's movements and exercises. Good luck with the dissertation!
Sam! We are playing in the same field of resonance! So glad to have such a brilliant companion in this magically lucid and mysterious place.
Aurobindo’s work has impacted me in physiological ways that I think are still reverberating. I also am feeling an incredibly strong resonance with the naming of the Dark Feminine and hope Schuyler continues to expound on this topic. Thank you for sharing your understanding of Gebser and his work.
Yes, I sense that this project is working on bringing greater consciousness to collective fractal bloodlines and opening closed looped systems of human relationships and lineages to new information (and composting stuff that no longer serves) that allows for more harmonic patterns to evolve. So exciting to be feeling this and having it change my body chemistry, which is simultaneously my ancestor’s and the Earth’s chemistry.
Ooh thank you to you and Sam, both for highlighting (so to speak) the dark feminine. Yes, there is more to come. And your interest encourages me to forefront what was a bit backgrounded. That's very cool. Something is already shifting as I think about that. A scene is arising....a memory, a KEY.
Loving this, Holly. Vibing in the Originary resonance chamber.
I’ve been catching whispers traveling through the halls, saying ideologies are the out way out and “vibes” are taking the stage.
Perhaps it can hardly be underestimated just how deeply the roots of vibes run.
🙏🏻
Hello again, lovely Schuyler. I'm a little out of step in that I read the first few chapters, then missed a few, then picked it up again. I apologize therefore if this is a discussion that's already been had, but I wanted to ask if there's a reason you've fictionalized yourself and your story, in the sense of writing about yourself in the third person. I ask because I'd like to make the case for writing it in the first person, as the memoir that it really is...
When Martha Beck first wrote Expecting Adam, her memoir about expecting her Down syndrome son, she wrote it as a novel. For whatever reason, creating that distance was initially helpful, until everyone working on the project recognized that since it was really a memoir, that it would be most powerful as one. I don't know if you've read that book, but it's extraordinarily magical, to the extent that when I read it, not only do I experience full body chills at regular intervals, but the sorts of magical things that happen to her in the book start to happen to me in my life for as long as I'm reading it. It's a beautiful book for many reasons, but the most powerful thing about it as far as I'm concerned is that it is tantamount to being proof that magic is real. Had she published it as a novel it would have seemed like... a nice idea, but just fiction.
What I sense in your story is the potential for something similar. As a reader, I stand to gain validation for my own experiences of magic by reading a first person account of yours. If I think S is a character you've made up, I lose that... and it's the thing I want the most. Even if you tell me S is you, if she's written in the third person, she comes across as fictional, and I lose that connection with the events as being real.
I don't read fiction anymore, or very rarely, because it no longer gives me what I'm looking for. But I devour spiritual memoirs. I recognize of course that the Katherine parts involve some poetic license, but I think the hybrid form is exciting and beautiful.
There have been times where I've had the peculiar feeling that I may have been Jane Austen in a previous life, the thought that my engagement with her work might go beyond that of just being a fan. It's riveting to me to read your account of this experience, as well as the descriptions of what spiritual experiences feel like in the body (I didn't comment on it that week, but there was a chapter that ended with a description of an energy rising up through Katherine and changing her whole world and I thought yes, this, I'd read fiction if it was like this, because this has been my experience, and most fiction doesn't cater to me and my experiences at all).
Again, I apologize if this discussion was already had. And I must also slightly apologize for being so forceful in making my case. As always, I trust that you'll let it float by if it doesn't resonate for you.
Much love to you x
Dear Emma, I am writing quickly tonight after posting a long chapter. Please know that I read your comment and have really been thinking about it. I made the switch (which you may now know) in Chapter 6 when another reader suggested it. I have enjoyed it ever since, but have also wondered about the distance the third person can offer.
I put it on the back burner because this week's focus was Katherine, but as I get into the next chapter (chapter 12) where we return to my life and times, I will make a call. I am leaning towards sticking with the third person. This surprises me. But, when I feel into it the main thing is...I DO feel Katherine writing my parts with me and to use "I" would be limiting what was essentially a "we" during that time. I also realize in playing with tense and person, that I feel so different, so essentially different now than I did then that I don't really resonate fully with the "I" who is having the experience. It's easier for me to relate to "S." I can have compassion for S where she didn't have it for herself. And that feels really important to the healing process.
Thank you for the Martha Beck reference. I now want to read that book. And thank you for making your case. I will continue to play with it as I prepare for next week! We shall see...
I’ve just come down with Covid (my first time!). I’ll be back when it’s over x
Schuyler,
It has been profound, to say the least, witnessing the way this whole writing project has been unfolding. First, I want to share that, as a man, I’ve been increasingly drawn into the recognition that I have my own complex relationship with the Dark Feminine in certain modes of her expression—a relationship that I am still very much in the process of working with. I don’t yet know how, but I imagine that this may be a catalytic read in relation to that process. Only time will tell, though.
Secondly, I will yet again morph into my Gebserian caricature-self for the sake of fashioning my own stylistic response to your yearning to be a writer of consequence, making a case for why I feel that what your are doing here is of deep value.
Gebser, after all, is one of many “big” personalities to inflect the unfolding spiritual mystery into a powerfully individuated articulation. Gurdjieff, of course, was another. Whereas you clearly have a strong karmic tie to the latter, I have sensed I have one with the former.
Gebser wasn't without his own karmic threads. Later in life, he claimed to have found an explanation for his own karmic task “in the fact that I was in some way brought into the extremely powerful spiritual field of force radiating through Sri Aurobindo.” Aurobindo, as you may know, enacted his own sacred marriage—a consort relationship with Mirra Alfassa, more widely known as "The Mother," which was, at least by all accounts I know of, only consummated spiritually in the subtle realms (but, in light of your work, who can be absolutely sure of such things, in the end?)
Anyway—here is a deep part of why I find this endeavor to be consequential. Gebser articulated several features of what he considered to be the dawning integral structure of consciousness which is currently struggling to be born—a spiritual task requiring our participation. Gebser sensed that "the spiritual" would find a new level of concrete realization for humanity through this mutation in consciousness.
Here are a number of those features—each of which I recognize to be weaving through the content, and process, of your writing journey here:
-the spiritual
-the supersession of the ego
-the realization of time-freedom
-the recognition of energy
-the mastery of movement
-the supersession of patriarchy
-the acquisition of intensity
-the transformation of the creative inceptual basis
I don’t want to prattle on too much further here by elaborating on the places that I see these elements either being included, or realized, in the midst of this work (many are no doubt obvious). I’ll just let it stand. However, given that Gebser transmitted these as urgent spiritual tasks for the times in which we live, I would say that what you are doing is of profound value.
One last thing I find quite interesting: you agreed to gift Katherine the fruits of your spiritual work in exchange for her assistance with your calling to write. I’m finding it so easy to imagine that this writing project itself—at once a profound spiritual accomplishment and an excellent literary achievement—becomes a kind of "mysterium coniunctionis," a subtle circuit fulfilling both souls’ ends of the agreement simultaneously.
Just one take—offered in the spirit of divine play.
Dear Sam and Gebser,
A deep bow of appreciation for you both. Sam, the list you offer is like a driving manual. I find it SO INCREDIBLY HELPFUL. I've been listening to an amazing podcast called The Emerald (do you know it?) and the episode this morning was about mapping states of consciousness. The point I was taking away is that in the West we often say the spiritual experience is ineffable--it can't be captured in words. And yet, all across the east and in shamanic cultures, these maps are quite clear with distinct features and landmarks common to any man. Like the Bardos described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. VERY clear. And I think of the Flower Ornament Scripture, Avatamsaka Sutta (Thomas Cleary's 800-page translation!!!), where realm upon realm of the Buddhaverse is described in precious detail. Fruits and delights so scrumptious you want to eat them, but don't eat the food from the spirit world, lest you get stuck there...POINT BEING...we do know these states and places, we do know the rules. We do know where we're going. It's mainly a matter of doing it (HAHAHA Nike knew: JUST DO IT). So, I have been just doing it because the feedback loop is so encouraging. What you say is so true:
- yes these are "urgent spiritual tasks"
- yes it is "a spiritual task requiring our participation"
Thank you for your recognition and encouragement. I really take that in. That you and others "get it" means the world to me. Next chapter I will muse about the importance in feminine healing and healing the feminine (in all and everywhere) is the need for the process to be witnessed. The need...for an audience. There is so much of the shame frequency in the feminine wounds--the silencing, the secrecy, the suppression--that we must bring it into the light. The great irony is (is it an irony?) that this bringing into the light feels so counter intuitive now. We're so long gone in the feminine secrecy space that it all feels like it SHOULD be private. Like S's reaction to the Sufi dancer...the rage that the young woman publicly enjoying her sensuality provoked. It was THIS! Yes, S wanted to be dancing, not watching (as did Katherine). BUT also, she was enraged by the audacity, the way this woman was breaking the silent agreement of feminine trauma that we shall and will keep our desires, our sensuality, our indiscretions, private.
But, I digress....or jump ahead of myself.
Yes...I found that promise to Katherine verbatim in one of the journals. I winced a little to find it. I had forgotten that I did indeed make the promise, the commitment, the vow. And until now, I had not followed through. She nearly gave up on me, I hate to think the karmic consequence of it :) So, yes I promised her the healing she needed in exchange for help writing. And I am getting it. She is a great writer. I started listening to the audiobook of Bliss and Other Stories. It's so charming, so artful. She's a master.
I just love what you're bringing to the process. I'm so grateful. Should I say WE are? I wonder what Gebser thought of Gurdjieff.
Yes, perhaps it can be a bit lazy to write off just how far we can "eff the ineffable" as far as differentiating spiritual realms in all their variety. I will check out the Emerald, and have yet to get to Chapter 11 (have been feverishly dissertating).
To the lats piece there, Gebser makes no mention of Gurdjieff in his only major work that has yet been translated into English, and I am not aware of any instances where they directly acknowledge one another.
However, Cynthia Bourgeault, the eclectic Christian mystic and contemplative, has been making those links recently, emphasizing that the Gurdjieff Work seems to be a particularly effective pathway for preparing THE BODY for the energetic intensification that will accompany—*is* accompanying—integral consciousness mutation.
Here are a few very brief articles, in the event they spark your interest.
https://www.cynthiabourgeault.org/blog/2021/02/05/horse-carriage-driver
https://www.cynthiabourgeault.org/blog/2022/01/04/three-centered-awareness
https://www.cynthiabourgeault.org/blog/2022/01/09/balancing-centers-integrating-structures
Ooooooh yes....I will dig in here. I haven't read Cynthia, yet. But, I like her line of thought and where she seems to be coming from. These will be helpful. I've been shocked by my experience of Gurdjieff's work NOW (versus a decade ago when I was first introduced). I can see that he was early in understanding trauma, somatic storing of trauma in the body and the theory of parts. I love what you say about the G work being a "pathway for preparing THE BODY for the energetic intensification that will accompany—*is* accompanying—integral consciousness mutation." YES. I think that was part of what it did for me. And for whatever reason - this has been my soul's great interest in this life: restoring and rebuilding the subtle body to the place where it can hold all of the light, awareness, prana, Shakti we need for this transformation of consciousness within and on the planet. The Tibetans call it the Vajra body (indestructible body). I've had to learn this of necessity - literally to NOT break, crack, come unhinged at the sheer force of the energies I've encountered. The way you write it here somehow gives me another facet, or reflection point. Thank you.
I think you'll like chapter 11 - there's a bit more about G's movements and exercises. Good luck with the dissertation!
And thank you so much for The Emerald recommendation... amazing