Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00023)

Richard Ihle writes-->
Well, Alan, I gave up long ago the notion that I could make myself understood
on theosophical subjects, so I am not dismayed on that score.

Jerry Schueler writes-->
What part of "misunderstood" don't we understand?

R.I.-->
Looking back on it all, I think my greatest area of weakness has been in
explaining the Seven-Year-Cycle model of "psychomaturation."  This is a
paradox, because I become more convinced about it each year--not in terms of
an exact accuracy of the seven-year intervals and their all-important
"mid-points" (when one begins seeing the characteristics of the next Cycle),
but rather just as a general indicator of the esoteric pattern by means of
which the "incarnation-embrangled I AM" has potential egoic delusions
progressively opened up to it.

Sometimes people have mixed up The Seven-Year-Cycles with the cognative
maturation of Piaget and Bruner; sometimes, the "moral maturation" of
Kohlberg; sometimes the who-knows-what of Erikson.  The basic problem, of
course, is that not so many people have a long-enough history with meditation
or other practices which involve learning to discriminate the Self from one
more subtle level after one more subtle level of "Substance."

Thus, when I might say there is a egoic sense in which a person who has a
headache can actually temporarily ~be~ (a semi-Self) the physical sensation
of the headache, they have no inner-observation of themselves to relate it
to.  To suggest that a small child cannot have that egoic experience until
somewhere towards three-and-one-half (mid-way through the Animating Cycle
when the egoic possibilities of the Physical Cycle begin) would make no sense
to them at all.  To say that an eight-year-old could ~have~ a feeling but
might not be able to ~be~ that feeling in the same egoically deluded sense as
a fourteen-year-old might sound demented to them.

But even for the individuals who are able to attach my words to internal
correlatives, I feel that both my inadequate motivation to share these things
at length and my imperfect writing skills are sufficient reasons for
cultivating a healthy resignation on the making-myself-understood issue.

Fortunately, I don't think Adeptship is necessarily dependent upon anyone
understanding my version of the Seven-Year-Cycle system.  What I think it
does depend upon, of course, is an individual's ongoing ability to keep the
"Once-Removed-Vantage" on whatever "contaminated" condition of consciousness
the embrangled part of the I AM is using at the moment.

For example, in my most recent interchanges it was necessary to utilize
Desire-Mental consciousness (contrary to philosophy class, one can seldom
expect to prevail with only pure, dispassionate reason); however, I would
have been ashamed of myself if I did not realize I was utilizing it.
 Certainly, I would not have been able to keep much "playful quality" which
results from doing something and seeing oneself do it at the same time.  (So
many people on this list seem to lose arguments just because they ~become~
their side of the argument 100%.)  Unfortunately, I did slip into ~complete~
Desire-Mental consciousness more than a few times, perhaps most notably with
my way-too-fast "Shit! post," the title of which I am now ashamed of.  Oh
well, I didn't say I ~was~ an Adept yet, just working on it. . . .

Which brings me to a "being misunderstood" which perhaps both you and I still
share like the "One-Track-Hounds" I referred to long ago--viz, our mutual
conviction that all the philosophizing, theosophizing, genderizing, and
whatever-else-izing all add up to zero IF WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING NEW WITH
OURSELVES BY MEANS OF THEM.

Thus, you might even agree, Jerry, that many people do not understand that
whatever our "messages," they are the messages of practical men, first and
foremost--perhaps even urgent men--:  that we talk . . . but that we never
~stop~ to talk. . . .

Godspeed,

Richard Ihle