Lost Coin Minutes  2/27/07

Daniel just returned from Florida where he attended the unveiling of his father's tombstone, a ceremony perhaps unique to Juddaism. His parents had come from the area where Gurdjieff was raised, in the Pamir Mountains south of Afghanistan. Daniel spent time with his father's friends, learning about the customs of his family region.

Daniel had a belief in his younger Gurdjieff years (age 17-28) that he could learn a secret beyond what he then knew. He would sit across the street from the Harvard Divinity School, thinking about this secret. Finally it came. Within the conceptual thinking mind, one can only come to conceptual thinking things. One must go beyond. This is present in the Gurdjieff teaching, but is emphasized more strongly in Buddhism.

Daniel read from Huang-po, an early Zen teacher. Buddha mind is not the mind of conceptual thought. It is detached from form. One must rid oneself of conceptual thought. Enlightenment may come in a flash or after ten stages of . . . whatever . . . but the result is a state of being in which there are no degrees. One can learn to stop conceptual thought, for a moment, and one will have a glimpse. What Carlos Castaneda describes in *Stopping the World*.  Thinking is not you. It is an activity.

Daniel is working on a conceptual framework for the Lost Coin process. Here is a skeletal outline:

Level 1: "tracking"  all efforts to observe ourselves, watch negative emotion, study of self

Level 2: "spiritual warrior methods" balancing centers, operating with correct centers, everyday excellence, will/body of warrior

Level 3: "mastery" person can remember self, takes charge of three centers

Level 4: "awakened self" Hung Po's mind without conceptual thought. All Buddhist and sentient beings are One Mind, nothing exists besides Mind. To reason about it is to err. Sentient beings are attached to form, so seek externally.

Level 5: "integration" can't stay in level 4, must choose life of human being. Martyr-like, Jesus Christ.

As we read or listen, we are not reading on the same level all the time. Mostly it's level 1, 2 and 3. Esoteric reading is level 4 (Buddhist, Christianity, Juddaism). We cycle through the levels, returning to 1 & 2.

Question from group member: How does Almaas fit in?  Daniel warns us to verify what we are reading, not to take on faith. Discussion of "holes." Relating to enneagram with attraction to other types.

We went around circle, each describing with one word a quality we are attracted to as a hole in ourselves. Discussion of   relativity of holes and our position within them?whether they are deep or tall.  At the "mastery" level 3 one has more choices.  At "awakened self" level 4 one can refuse to move mind.

One person talked about the power of experiencing a feeling, rather than running from it, and realizing it's not so bad, thus diffusing the fear.

We went around the circle again, repeating our first word and modifying it with new definition/realization.

In groups of  4, we each completed three sentences:  "My parents wanted me to be . . ."

"I became . . . ." and "I want to be . . . ."

We were asked to compare what we had just said with our earlier "hole" words, and notice the second dimension, or second view through the microscope of ourselves.

Our task this week: to consciously practice loving kindness, to cultivate a "feeling" state.

We ended the meeting with a short meditation, trying to halt the conceptual mind, and admonished to try harder.
