Under Attack 2: It's Gotten Personal

[Ominous]

All my life ppl have said that I daydream too much, I introspect too much. Now, my significant other claims I spend too much time reading ("escaping" in her words). I asked her if she gets curious about the Truth of the world, & she said NO, that WHAT'S REAL, I.E. FAMILY, IS WHAT CONCERNS HER: that what I'm researching is MEANINGLESS. This is the mother of my children, who I've built a life with for 8 years. Is she an OP? Possibly. I'm just beginning & already its killing me inside.

 

[Ominous]

Is the disintegration of my family necessary for me to progress? We all just moved in2 a house, just had a baby girl 7 weeks ago, & it seems the only problem is me & my researching. It takes time away from family, I'm told. My partner has a drive for making more $, getting a better life, being financially secure. But IMO, if every1 has food in their bellies & a domicile, that's all we need, materialistically. She says I need to wake up to the real world. Ironically, that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

 

[Laura]

All my life ppl have said that I daydream too much, I introspect too much. Now, my significant other claims I spend too much time reading ("escaping" in her words). I asked her if she gets curious about the Truth of the world, & she said NO, that WHAT'S REAL, I.E. FAMILY, IS WHAT CONCERNS HER: that what I'm researching is MEANINGLESS. This is the mother of my children, who I've built a life with for 8 years. Is she an OP? Possibly. I'm just beginning & already its killing me inside.

Interesting. My ex used to say to me "You think too much!"

It reminds me of the difference between the "healthy minded" people and the
so-called "morbid minded." I've even wondered if this divide is that
between OPs and the potentially souled?

Anyway, here is what William James had to say about it in his wonderful
book: Varieties of Religious Experience:

"At our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded temperament, the
temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering,
and in which the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water of
crystallization in which the individual's character is set. We saw how this
temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion, a religion
in which good, even the good of this world's life, is regarded as the
essential thing for a rational being to attend to. This religion directs him
to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the universe by
systematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by
ignoring them in his reflective calculations, or even, on occasion, by
denying them outright. Evil is a disease and worry about evil is a disease
in itself. Even repentance and remorse.. may be but sickly impulses.

"Let us now... turn towards those persons who cannot so swiftly throw
off the burden of the consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to
suffer from its presence. ...there are different levels of the morbid
mind... there are people for whom evil means only a maladjustment with
things, a wrong correspondence of one's life with the environment. Such evil
as this is curable... by either modifying the self or the things or both at
once. There are others for whom evil is... a wrongness or vice in [their]
essential structure, which no alteration in the environment, or any
superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a
supernatural remedy. On the whole, the Latin races have leaned more towards
the former way of looking upon evil, ...while the Germanic races have tended
rather to think of Sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of
something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to
be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations.

"...we speak of the threshold of a man's consciousness in general, to
indicate the amount of noise, pressure, or other outer stimulus which it
takes to arouse his attention at all. One with a high threshold will doze
through an amount of racket by which one with a low threshold would be
immediately waked. Similarly, when one is sensitive to small differences in
any order of sensation, we say he has a low 'difference threshold.' His mind
easily steps over it into the consciousness of the differences in question.
And just so we might speak of a 'pain threshold' a 'fear threshold,' a
'misery threshold,' and find it quickly overpassed by the consciousness of
some individuals, but lying too high in others to be reached by their
consciousness.

"Goethe [expressed]

'I will say nothing against the course of my
existence. But at the bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I
can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks
of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must
be raised up again forever.'

"And Martin Luther said:

'I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord
will come forthwith and carry me hence... rather than live forty years more,
I would give up my chance of Paradise.'

"The only relief that 'healthy mindedness' can give is: 'Stuff and
nonsense! Get out into the open air! Cheer up, you'll be all right if you
will only drop your morbidness!' But, to ascribe spiritual value to mere
happy-go-lucky contentment is but the very consecration of forgetfulness and
superficiality. Our troubles are that we CAN die, that we CAN be ill, that
we ... need a life not correlated with death, a health not laible to
illness, a good that will not perish... said a friend: 'The trouble with me
is that I believe too much in happiness and goodness and nothing can console
me for their transiency.'

"[And so those who experience] a little cooling down of animal
excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little
descent of the pain threshold, brings the worm at the core of all our usual
springs of delight into full view, and turns us into melancholy
metaphysicians.

"Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the emotion
with which your world now inspires you and try to imagine it as it exists,
purely by itself, without your favorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment.
It will be almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of
negativity and deadness. Whatever of value, interest, or meaning our world
may appear endued with are pure gifts of the spectator's mind. [For example]
love transforms the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont
Blanc from a corpse-like gray to a rosy enchantment. [So with our emotions]
if they are there, life changes.

This alone should tell us how easily our emotions can be used to control or hypnotize us!

"In Tolstoy's case the sense that life had any meaning whatever was for
a time wholly withdrawn. The result was a transformation in the whole
expression of reality. When we study the phenomenon of regeneration, we
shall see that a not infrequent consequence of the change is a
transfiguration of the face of nature in his eyes. ...An urgent wondering
and questioning is set up, a poring theoretic activity, and in the desperate
effort to get into right relation with the matter, the sufferer is often led
to a solution...

"Tolstoy writes:

'...I was neither insane nor ill. On the contrary, I possessed a physical
and mental strength which I have rarely met in persons of my age. I could
mow as well as the peasants, I could work with my brain eight hours
uninterruptedly and feel no bad effects. And yet I could give no reasonable
meaning to any actions of my life. And I was surprised that I had not
understood this from the very beginning.

'My state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played
upon me by someone. One can live only so long as one is intoxicated,
drunk with life but when one grows sober one cannot fail to see
that it is all a stupid cheat. What is truest about it is that there is nothing
even funny or silly in it; it is cruel and stupid, purely and simply.

'But perhaps, I said to myself, there may be
something I have failed to notice or to comprehend. it is not possible that
this condition of despair should be natural to mankind.

'And I sought for an explanation in all the branches of knowledge
acquired by men. I questioned painfully and protractedly and with no
idle curiosity. I sought, not with indolence, but laboriously and
obstinately for days and nights on end.

'I sought like a man who is lost and seeks to save himself - and I found
nothing. I became convinced, moreover, that all those who before me had
sought for an answer in the sciences have also found nothing. And not only
this, but that they have recognized that the very thing which was leading me
to despair - the meaningless absurdity of life - is the only incontestable
knowledge accessible to man.'

"The only thing that need interest us now is the phenomenon of this
absolute disenchantment with ordinary life... when disillusionment has gone
as far as this, when one has tasted of the fruit of the tree, and the
happiness of Eden never comes again... the only happiness that then can come
is something vastly more complex, including natural evil as one of its
elements. The sufferer is born again as a deeper kind of conscious being
than he could be before.

"Having arrived at this point, we can see the antagonism that must arise
between the 'healthy-minded' optimist and the morbid-minded who take the
experience of viewing evil as essential. To the latter, 'healthy-mindedness'
seems unspeakably blind and shallow. To the former, the latter seems seems
unmanly and diseased. They believe that there is something almost obscene
about these children of wrath and cravers of a second birth. And, if
religious intolerance, hanging and burning at the stake, were still in
vogue, there is little doubt that the 'healthy-minded' would advocate the
destruction of the morbid minded rather than the other way around.

"The method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in
the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. ...yet there is no
doubt that 'healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine,
because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a
genuine portion of reality; and these evil facts may be, after all, the best
key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the
deepest levels of truth.

"The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of
daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles and every individual
existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. To believe in the
carnivorous reptiles of geologic times is hard for our imagination - they
seem too much like museum specimens. Yet there is no tooth in any one of
those museum skulls that did not daily hold fast to the body struggling in
despair of some fated living victim. Forms of horror just as dreadful to the
victims fill the world about us today. Here, on our very hearths, the
infernal cat plays with the panting mouse or holds the hot bird fluttering
in her jaws. Crocodiles, pythons and rattlesnakes are vessels of life as
real as we are; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living
prey, the deadly horror which the morbid minded feels is the literally right
reaction to the situation.

"...Since the evil facts are as genuine parts of nature as the good
ones, and our philosophic presumption should be that they have some rational
significance, then systematic failure to accord these things active
attention is less complete than those systems that attempt to include these
elements in their scope. The 'healthy-minded optimists only need to be born
once, but the 'sick souls' need to be born twice to be happy.

The result is two different conceptions of the universe:
subjective and objecfive.

"In the once born, the world is a one-storied affair... whose parts have
just the values which they appear to have... [to the twice born] the world
is a double-storied mystery. Natural good is not simply insufficient in
amount and transient, there lurks a falsity in its very being. It keeps us
from our real good and renunciation and despair of it are our first step in
the direction of the truth. There are two lives, the natural and the
spiritual and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other."

 

[kenlee]

"In the once born, the world is a one-storied affair... whose parts have
just the values which they appear to have... [to the twice born] the world
is a double-storied mystery. Natural good is not simply insufficient in
amount and transient, there lurks a falsity in its very being. It keeps us
from our real good and renunciation and despair of it are our first step in
the direction of the truth. There are two lives, the natural and the
spiritual and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other."

And we have this from Gurdjieff's book 'Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson':

"In all three-brained beings of the whole of our Universe without exception, among whom are also we men, owing to the data crystallized in our common presences for engendering in us the Divine impulse of conscience, "the-whole-of-us" and the whole of our essence, are, and must be, already in our foundation, only suffering. And there must be suffering, because the completed actualizing of the manifestation of such a being-impulse in us can proceed only from the constant struggle of two quite opposite what are called "complexes-of-the- functioning" of those two sources which are of quite opposite origin, namely, between the processes of the functioning of our planetary body itself and the parallel functionings arising progressively from the coating and perfecting of our higher being-bodies within this planetary body of ours, which functionings in their totality actualize every kind of Reason in the three-centered beings.

"'In consequence of this, every three-centered being of our Great Universe, and also we men existing on the Earth, must, owing to the presence in us also of the factors for engendering the Divine impulse of "Objective Conscience," always inevitably struggle with the arising and the proceeding within our common presences of two quite opposite functionings giving results always sensed by us either as "desires" or as "nondesires."

 

[Seeker 1313]

HI Ominous,
It is frustrating when you are seeking the truth and looking for answers. However, I would encourage you to keep things in perspective. The information listed on this site is experimental and may not be the answer. However, your family is of the upmost importance especially your new child. that child does need you to teach it how to think and get through this world. Good luck from one seeker to another.

 

[allen]

Is the disintegration of my family necessary for me to progress? We all just moved in2 a house, just had a baby girl 7 weeks ago, & it seems the only problem is me & my researching. It takes time away from family, I'm told.

Another possibility is that learning to balance reading and researching with family is necessary for you to progress in the Work. One of the biggest lessons for me has been to learn about external consideration. There is a reason for why I am in the relationship I am in. It is the relationship that was right for me at the time because I was programmed to look for this type of relationship.

Realizing that got me to read and research on narcissism and my own feeding tendencies...and to apply that reading and research to my everyday life (i.e., my relationship). This application makes the reading real to me rather than merely theoretical. And yeah, it really sucks at times! I understand just how hard it can be. Facing up to who we really are and all of our programs (the predator mind) isn't a walk in the park. Rewiring those circuits hurts sometimes.

 

[Peto]

Is the disintegration of my family necessary for me to progress? We all just moved in2 a house, just had a baby girl 7 weeks ago, & it seems the only problem is me & my researching. It takes time away from family, I'm told.

I think it's a balancing act. On the one hand, it's necessary to set out some clear boundaries up front: You have the right to some time of your own to do what you want, which is reading and research. On the other hand, it is a good idea to be more externally considerate to your partner and child, i.e. attend more to their needs and organize your reading time so as to avoid interfering with family functions. If your partner is a reasonable person, she will be able to accept the arrangement. You will find that you'll have to give up all your other hobbies and probably some sleep, but it is doable without the disintegration of your family.

 

[Ominous]

Kenlee, I have entirely abandoned all other hobbies. This is what concerns my partner - that I spend any freetime available reading/researching. She feels I'm obsessed w/ "crazy conspiracy theories." But, as u said, if time w/ my family is my main priority (& it IS), then she should be fine w/ it. I just hafta find a way to explain it to her that hopefully gets her interested. PEACE

 

[anart]

Kenlee, I have entirely abandoned all other hobbies. This is what concerns my partner - that I spend any freetime available reading/researching. She feels I'm obsessed w/ "crazy conspiracy theories." But, as u said, if time w/ my family is my main priority (& it IS), then she should be fine w/ it. I just hafta find a way to explain it to her that hopefully gets her interested. PEACE

Hi Ominous,

It's been my experience that you cannot 'get someone else interested' in the objective truth. Each person has to come to it on their own, in their own time, and if she already has an emotional block against it since she sees it as taking you away from her/the family, then it is highly unlikely that she will 'get interested'.

It certainly sounds like you need to work on being externally considerate to her - and by being externally considerate, you make her life easier and your life easier. If you've not read this thread - http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5732 - please do, it might give you some perspective on your situation.

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

She feels I'm obsessed w/ "crazy conspiracy theories

Or is she obsessed with crazy non-conspiracy theories? :P After all, given even a slight glimpse at reality, it becomes instantly clear that conspiracy is everywhere, lies and manipulation and control is rampant like dirt - and very few people would deny the latter, but amazingly the word conspiracy gets people into some sort of defensive-denial. Somehow along the way they miss the irony that while knowing that lies and manipulation is everywhere, they were manipulated to compulsively deny conspiracy, as if these things are not intimately intertwined. Amazing how disinfo works, few people realize that through disassociation and other tricks, people are easily led to believe contradictory notions all at the same time.

As Ark advised me about a million times until it sunk in (and believe me, my stubbornness, laziness, and compulsiveness were in the way every step of the way), see what your duties are and make sure you do what is your duty. It's as simple as that, but not simple to do. I mean, I should go as far as say it IS simple to do, it's just amazingly difficult to get ourselves to do what we know we should do. We are our own worst enemy in this respect, and no wonder G and other esoteric sources point out just how mechanical we are and how we are unable to DO anything at all, we're not in control of our own carriage here.

The thing that happened with me is that after I discovered this site in my search for answers, and the jaw-dropping info here, I had a compulsive urge to prematurely act on this info, which would've worked against my own best interests, something I did not see at the time. Like the urge to separate myself from my family cuz suddenly I felt surrounded by people whose purpose in life seemed to be to keep me from doing anything important. Yes, they are asleep, brainwashed, confused, full of delusions, contradictions, subjectivity, sacred cows, assumptions, and all kinds of self-destructive habits that make them essentially a walking dead in many ways. And sometimes it is very very frustrating, it can really make you wanna run and not look back. Definitely in some cases this is precisely what has to be done, because the relationship is draining and you could be with a psychopath or something along those lines. But in other cases, your first glimpses at the terror of the situation might simply set off a panic, an emotional/psychological panic. And while your perception of the zombified sleep state of humanity and your own family may be accurate, your reaction to it may be anything but beneficial. And don't forget that you're just as zombified, you're just getting a glimpse of it, so don't discount yourself, or pretend you're suddenly different just because you realized it.

Hell, one of the first things that began to happen is that I started losing my social skills. I mean literally, as I was communicating in casschat, I kept striving for a more and more objective and clear communication, and as I began to actively observe myself I began to see this social programming in me, and it made me sick, it all looked ridiculous beyond belief, and I couldn't stand it and just wanted to STOP it, wanted everybody to stop pretending! And of course, I cannot talk to people in my life as I would with you guys here for obvious reasons, I either act "normal" and adopt social programs, or I'll have some very serious social difficulties, especially with my age group (20's etc). So for a while there, I became more ostracized from my peers because I was simply disgusted with how mechanical our communication is, how compulsive and meaningless and fake it all is, all of it. But that too wasn't the answer, it was just my initial reaction to seeing this specific part of the "terror of the situation".

Anyway long story short, I had to get over myself. I had to learn to "be in this world but not of it". You can't run from people, you can't run from society, you can't run from the world, it won't do you or the world any good. You can take concrete steps to protect yourself from that which truly is a threat - like a draining relationship or a psychopath - and of course your own ignorance. But once I got the hang of being able to handle seeing the terror of the situation, I began to re-adapt to the world, I had to be in this world if I was going to help anybody in anything. I knew this persona wasn't me anymore, but that's ok. And yes some of those old programs came back again, but this time I was aware of them, I let them in myself, I was using them for strategic purposes, to help me blend in and interact efficiently, but without falling for them myself and confusing them for "me".

This may not directly apply to your situation of course, but this has been my experience, and I think it is at least similar to what you may be going through. If your wife doesn't want to do the whole truth thing, you may need to simply accept it - not everyone is ready, not everyone is at that point where they need it or can handle it, everyone has their lessons. You just gotta figure out if she's still reasonable and if you can live with this, if this is something you can handle and work with. If she does love you, you should be able to at least have a discussion with her about it - and as others suggested, to find a balance. I'd keep the whole "search for truth" thing perhaps on low profile but maybe use what you learn to casually bring up various subjects in a way not to step on her sacred cows but at the same time to make her wonder, what if? And certainly start early with your baby girl, teach her to think, to question, but do so gently and not in a way that your wife would object. She can't object against common sense, critical thinking skills etc, right? As The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says on its cover, "Don't Panic".

And as anart aptly put, I was internally considering - too obsessed with my own newly-developed perception to worry about what others think or feel. But after the initial shock settled, I was able to calm down, and clearly think - and in that clarity I had to remember external consideration, it hit me like a rock, and I was very glad I did not make the rash decisions I was considering.

 

[Novelis]

Ominous, I must say that I too am in a similar predicament, although probably much less serious than yours.
I'm not married, and certainly don't have children, so I am not as bound to that relationship as you are, but I think I can understand where you are coming from.
From what I've learned (If anything), is, as Scio puts it:

I'd keep the whole "search for truth" thing perhaps on low profile but maybe use what you learn to casually bring up various subjects in a way not to step on her sacred cows but at the same time to make her wonder, what if?

So, if she thinks you are into all this "crazy conspiracy" stuff, she probably doesn't see how what you are doing is relevant to life, and that all this research involves you, her, and everybody in a very personal way as well. But, as I have seen, how can she, or anyone, understand when they aren't aware of the nexus of how this research ties in with everything?

Probably sounds to her like unconnected, loose dots of info that aren't tied together in any real or cohesive fashion.
(For example: Yeah, so what if the bible is a pack of lies? SO? How is that related to my daughter? Or the happiness and security of our family?)

Everyone has bits of knowledge about SOMETHING, use her interests and involve her in a way so that HER dots may connect and expand, then at least she knows that you really know your stuff, whatever the subject.

From teaching English as a foreign language, I've found a proverb that rings true not only in teaching English, but in teaching anything:

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."
~ Chinese Proverb ~

I can't express how useful this thread has been, thank you everyone.

Good luck in your relationship, Ominous.

 

[Peto]

Kenlee, I have entirely abandoned all other hobbies. This is what concerns my partner - that I spend any freetime available reading/researching. She feels I'm obsessed w/ "crazy conspiracy theories." But, as u said, if time w/ my family is my main priority (& it IS), then she should be fine w/ it. I just hafta find a way to explain it to her that hopefully gets her interested. PEACE

Hi Ominous,

It's been my experience that you cannot 'get someone else interested' in the objective truth. Each person has to come to it on their own, in their own time, and if she already has an emotional block against it since she sees it as taking you away from her/the family, then it is highly unlikely that she will 'get interested'.

It certainly sounds like you need to work on being externally considerate to her - and by being externally considerate, you make her life easier and your life easier. If you've not read this thread - http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5732 - please do, it might give you some perspective on your situation.

Hi Ominous,

I can't emphasize enough that you should NOT try to get her "interested". This is the error most people have in the beginning when they first get to know about the materials here. In fact, if the heat gets too much, you should do just the opposite, cover what you are doing from her as much as possible. For example, if your reading is what gets to her, you can try to have your reading in the early morning, on the way to your work, at lunch break, etc. and use your free time at home (and only your free time) to read the news or do something that is more plausibly considered "normal". Just some ideas to get you started.

Since your baby is just 7 weeks, you should understand that it is very demanding for your partner. It is only normal that she wants you to spend more time to help her and more time with the baby. So do use most of your time at home for your family. That's part of what external consideration is about.

 

[ark]

The information listed on this site is experimental and may not be the answer.

Hi Seeker,

Your own life is experimental too and your answer may not be the answer. What about that?

 

[Ominous]

The information listed on this site is experimental and may not be the answer.

Hi Seeker,

Your own life is experimental too and your answer may not be the answer. What about that?

I was going to reply to Seeker but Ark, u said it best, sir. Thnx every1 for the great advice! I think "trying" to get her interested indeed would be a mistake at this point in time. PEACE

 

[Renaissance]

I asked her if she gets curious about the Truth of the world, & she said NO, that WHAT'S REAL, I.E. FAMILY, IS WHAT CONCERNS HER: that what I'm researching is MEANINGLESS.

I guess it's ironic that the truth of the world and our family relations have quite a bit in common. There is one type of shock when we begin to see all the lies that our media, government, educational systems etc. tell us, but there is another when we see the lies on a personal level in our family life. Even then we usually begin to see the outer lies first (such as seeing your wifes conclusion that truth is meaningless) before we face our own selfish programs. Once we observe how our programs work and how they have kept us from developing our true selves, then we're in a better position to understand how to properly interact with others. It takes time, however using others' lessons here as a guideline will probably be of much assistance while you learn the nuts and bolts of your lessons that will bring more personal realizations.