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ad 1: (Jungian) personality traits, perhaps, like introversion vs extroversion, or being people focussed vs outcome-focused, etc. While our personalities tend to lean towards one or the other, both sides of the polarity are important for healthy individuals and communities.
ad 2: I find many distinctions clarifying, like the four steps from the pure act of intelligence to the ‘book’, or the distinctions of monism, dualism, and love. At the same time, I worry that I hold to these structures of interpretation too tightly, limiting the way I can perceive things (reality).Ad 1: Grace
I wonder if “concentration without effort” is not the key that opens the access to grace, which is always freely available.… when the center of directing consciousness is transposed from the head to the chest— from the cerebral system to the rhythmic system (the tightrope walker, the juggler, St. Dionysius).
Ad 2: Rhythm and Eternity
The lemniscate represents a rhythmic movement and the concept of infinity. It is the symbol of a never-ending loop and thus means forever, no beginning and no end, eternal. Being mindful of nature’s cycles, e.g. the breathing cycle, the daily or seasonal cycles can help us access eternity, in the present. It is the ‘oscillations of the mental substance’ that spacializes time into chronological time, into past, present, and future.
Ad 3: Other practices
All of these will do I assume: Tree of Contemplative Practices https://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/treead 1: I read through the book back in 2015 and remember how it opened up many new trains of thought. I remember also that a lot of the references mentioned were unfamiliar to me and it felt like I am only scratching the surface. I knew then no people to ask for guidance and to share understanding with. This course seems to offer this opportunity now.
ad 2: CP and LD have been my main practices for quite some time. For retreats, I have joined local Zen Buddhist sangha.
ad 3: I would like to understand some of the resources and references the author points to better and would like to recognize the universal patterns as they show up in particular forms in different traditions.
ad 4: This may be for the parking lot: Hermeticism and 4th Way teaching both point to Egyptian roots. I recall reading that they do not view each other in a friendly way?!
