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Work on self has never been easy, certainly isn’t warm and fuzzy, sweet and frothy, sparkly and beautiful. It will never be everyone’s cup of tea, or a welcome dose of medicine. However, for those who want to work, this is a way I know works, and there is a deep, essential satisfaction in that, apart from all the disturbance, the sweat, the uncertainties involved.
CHAPTER 1 AWAKENING THE MACHINE
The sleeping machine does not—and cannot—produce transformation. A change in Being is obtained only through intense efforts and struggle against our tendency to fall into a state of identification with the machine’s sleep.
We must, in short, deliver an intentional shock; a tangible personal experience in which we see for ourselves that all this is not just some sort of interesting philosophy concocted for our amusement. We must somehow see, feel and sense for ourselves that the machine is really asleep; we may even see it as actually dead in the grimmest sense of the word.
Four definite forms of consciousness are possible to us: Horizontal Sleep Walking Sleep The Awakened State Transformation of the Being
but we must find the courage to realize where we actually stand, and then begin from there, if we are not to fall into imaginary work.
Ordinary activities of the machine do not require our attention or presence even to the smallest degree. When we first come to the Work, we are more animal than spiritual, because we have sacrificed real consciousness for a state in which we are carried along by the routine mechanical activities of the machine as it marches its habitual treadmill to oblivion.
And because the nonphenomenal part of ourselves, through the hypnotic influence of sensation and mental distractions and seductions, falls into identification with the machine’s sleep, we will also someday die along with the sleeping machine, never having experienced what it really means to be alive in the machine.
Because we have no will of our own until our will has been intentionally developed, our attention is captivated by the activities and interests which originate within the machine, which is also the source of all negative emotion, all associative mental processes and all negative manifestations.
This subtle activity seems like nothing, but just the fact that we are observing the machine awakens it a little, and our active observation has the effect, although only over a long period of time, of actually altering what is being observed.
AI Summary
Practical Work on Self by E. J. Gold presents key insights from the Taoism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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