Ompyrean.com

Underground Education Network

[thatwhichdoesnotsuffer]

"What can be free is that which can occupy a position between like and dislike, so that instead of there being two states of like and dislike, there are three states: Like, dislike and freedom. These form a triangle or a triad. When you really understand what it is that I am now talking about, you understand a great deal that could be achieved with this work. This is why it is not a question of suppressing like and dislike, because if this twofold action–pleasure- pain, or enjoyment and suffering–is strong enough, the third one–the one which is able to be free–can also be strong. In general, people who make progress in this work, and have a possibility of going forward, have strong feelings, strong likes and dislikes, strong urges, strong enjoyment and acute suffering. They know the difference between really making demands on their bodies and indulging their bodies. When they have these kinds of strong forces working on them, the third force, the force of their own “I” where they can be free, also can be strong. It is very far from being a question of suppressing these things. They have to play in us. They have to produce this tension in us. We have to do this particular trick which is described in the chapter on the organization of man’s existence by Ashiata Shiemash, that you have to consciously strengthen the forces of non desires. This is the way to become free. Otherwise one is entirely a slave to one’s desires. It never says that desires must be eliminated or suppressed, but that the strength of non desires must be increased, so that non desires can be stronger than desires. Then there can be freedom. Gurdjieff said the Buddha taught that the best way of freeing oneself from one’s own egoism, from the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer, is to set oneself to bear the manifestations of others displeasing to oneself. The other side of the same thing is not always give oneself to situations that are pleasing to us. There is a certain science of this. It is not a question of forcing oneself all the time to do things one dislikes, or depriving oneself of the things one likes. That sets up wrong kind of force in us, not the way to freedom. With experience and practice after a certain time, you can come to recognize a situation where it is right to act in a certain way in order to be free. You see that you’re going to be caught in some situation and you realize that here is an opportunity for acting as a free person." —John G. Bennett

[ompyrean]

First, Second, and Third Force - Ompyrean

First Force means the “I want / I need / I should” doership posture; Second Force is the resistance that arises in response to it.

It’s not about doing or not doing something—it’s about the mental orientation from which you interact with the world. That being said, the absence of doership does not mean bedrotting, nor does it entail sinking into vices. Laziness and degenerative indulgences are themselves symptoms of Second Force, which in turn is a symptom of First Force.

[ompyrean]

The contemporary injunction to "create your own reality" typically degenerates into psychologized wish-fulfillment divorced from traditional metaphysics. Against this reduction, authentic Hermeticism and practical alchemy teach that ritual operations effect ontological transformation through precise manipulation of subtle causality. Reality-creation, properly understood, is not positive thinking but theurgic science grounded in the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm.

https://ompyrean.com/2025/10/21/practical-alchemy-and-the-hermetic-art-of-reality-creation-through-ritual/

[ompyrean]

The Metaphysics of Paganism: A Traditional Defense of Polytheistic Philosophy - Ompyrean

Understanding the Metaphysics of Paganism: Beyond Monotheistic Reduction The metaphysics of paganism has been consistently misrepresented by

[ompyrean]

https://ompyrean.com/2025/10/19/what-are-those-voices-in-my-head-on-polypsychism-and-the-illusion-of-unity/

[ompyrean]

You've been "working on yourself" for years and you're basically the same person.

You read the books. Listen to podcasts. Understand growth mindset, neuroplasticity, limiting beliefs. You can explain why meditation matters and how habits form.

And the instant someone criticizes you, you react exactly as you always have. Defensive, hurt, mechanical.

This isn't failure. This is predictable.

Because self-improvement culture works on knowledge (what you understand) when transformation requires being (what you can actually do).

Knowledge accumulates fast. You can become an expert in self-improvement concepts within months. Read 50 books. Understand all the frameworks. Feel like you're learning.

Being transforms slow. Through daily practice. Over years. Through periods where nothing seems to happen.

The gap between these two is where decades get wasted.

Here's the test:

Can you maintain calm attention for 5 minutes without your mind wandering?

Can you witness an emotion without immediately reacting to it?

Can you sit with discomfort without reaching for distraction?

These are being-questions. They measure capacity, not understanding.

Most people can't do any of these consistently. Not because they don't understand why they should. But because their being hasn't developed the capacity.

This is why you can read about emotional regulation while being completely unregulated. Why you understand your triggers but still get triggered. Why you know you shouldn't take things personally while taking everything personally.

Gurdjieff called this "learned fools"—people who know everything and can do nothing.

Traditional teachings understood this clearly. Vedanta distinguished indirect knowledge (from study) from direct knowledge (from realization). Buddhism distinguished intellectual understanding from prajñā (wisdom that transforms functioning).

All recognized: you can study water and die of thirst.

What actually develops being:

Not reading about practices. Doing them. Daily. For 90 days minimum. Through the boring parts. Through the periods where nothing seems to happen.

Self-observation. Conscious suffering. Maintaining intention against resistance. One practice, daily, measured by capacity gained not understanding accumulated.

The timeline: months to see initial results, years for genuine transformation. This offends the part wanting quick results. That part is exactly what needs to transform.

Not self-help. Not more knowledge to accumulate. The actual map for transformation.

For those who recognize that understanding accumulated while capacity didn't.

https://ompyrean.com/2025/10/19/why-youre-not-improving-after-years-of-self-improvement-and-what-actually-works/

[ompyrean]

Your higher consciousness isn't asleep. You just can't hear it broadcasting. This is the most important thing to understand about higher centers: they don't need to be "activated" or "awakened." They already function. Continuously. Perfectly. Right now. Rhe problem isn't the transmission. The problem is your receiver.

Buddhi and the Higher Intellectual Center: When Intellect Awakens - Ompyrean

There is thinking about truth and there is seeing truth directly. Most of what passes for intelligence, even sophisticated philosophical rea

[ompyrean]

Why your psychology degree taught you nothing about consciousness (and why it can't). 🎓❌

Against Academic Consciousness Studies: The Epistemological Fraud of Profane Inquiry - Ompyrean

The field of consciousness studies presents itself as the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiry—neuroscience meeting philosophy, psychol

[ompyrean]

Why 10 years of meditation didn't change you 📚➡️❌

You developed KNOWLEDGE (what you know).

You didn't develop BEING (what you are).

That blue line shooting up? That's you reading 100 books about awakening.

That purple line barely moving? That's your actual consciousness staying mechanical.

The gap between them? That's why you're still reactive, defensive, identified, and asleep—just with better vocabulary.

https://ompyrean.com/higher-centers-explained-gurdjieffs-path-to-awakening/

[ompyrean]

After 10 years of intense spiritual practice, why are you still asleep? This article explains everything.

Higher Centers Explained: Gurdjieff's Path to Awakening - Ompyrean

Gurdjieff's higher centers—the dormant emotional and intellectual capacities beyond ordinary consciousness. Learn why they don't function an

[ompyrean]

By making an opponent out of someone, you attribute importance to them. You then depend on them to orient yourself, unconsciously stopping yourself from ending the conflict through the complete dissolution of the dialectic.

Conflicts aren't Real: The Parasitic Concept of Opposition - Ompyrean

Conflicts, opponents, victory, and defeat. These are nothing more than concepts. At most they describe an inner state, not reality.

[ompyrean]

When you drop effort, you do not necessarily give up challenges or endeavors. You only give up the struggle. Any activity out of alignment — one taken up from obligation, compulsion, or self-importance — will not survive without effort. When effort disappears, such activities die naturally. What remains is what flows.

Efforts are Unnecessary: The Vestigial Faculty of Discipline - Ompyrean

You go through life making countless efforts, but doing so is merely a sign of misalignment. Reclaim your energy by dropping efforts.

[ompyrean]

A room records the state of the being who inhabits it. Disorder is never neutral; it is the visible geometry of distracted energy. To restore order is therefore not a matter of decoration but of energetic hygiene. The way of tidying, as taught by Marie Kondo, is one of the simplest modern forms of energetic training: an apprenticeship in the movement of attention through matter.

The Esoteric Art of Tidying - Ompyrean

A room records the state of the being who inhabits it. Disorder is never neutral; it is the visible geometry of distracted energy. To restor

[ompyrean]

Gurdjieff: Polypsychism

At different moments we are different people, often contradictory, each claiming to be “I.” This insight, called polypsychism or “the doctrine of many I’s”, became the cornerstone of what is now known as the Fourth Way, a school of conscious evolution.

Polypsychicism: The Doctrine of Many Selves - Ompyrean

The Polypsychic Being Part I — Origins of the Idea of Many Selves In the early twentieth century, Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky and hi

[ompyrean]

The figure of Gurdjieff stands in the early twentieth century like a comet entering the moral atmosphere of Europe: brilliant, opaque, disturbing, trailing fragments of forgotten science. Those who met him left portraits more paradoxical than any philosopher’s: a man at once monk and mountebank, ascetic and sensualist, healer and disrupter. Around him constellated a mythology of shocks, tales of deliberate humiliation, of impossible errands and sudden tenderness.

Gurdjieff: Methodology & Practice - Ompyrean

The Master of Shocks: Anecdotal Methods of Gurdjieff and Their Inner Logic The figure of Gurdjieff stands in the early twentieth century lik

[ompyrean]

In each formulation the principle is identical: there exists within man a faculty not yet organized, a spark awaiting the deliberate friction of attention. Both masters warned that this creation cannot be forced. The higher centers already exist, but man is not connected with them. The task is to construct the bridge.

Future Man: Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Fourth Way - Ompyrean

The twentieth century produced few metaphysical syntheses capable of standing beside the grand architectures of the ancient world. Among tho

[ompyrean]

Humanity has always been haunted by what it cannot see. The lure of the invisible, of signs, powers, entities, and communications from beyond runs like a subterranean current through every civilization. 

The Mirage of the Invisible: On the Dangers of the Supernatural - Ompyrean

Humanity has always been haunted by what it cannot see. The lure of the invisible—of signs, powers, entities, communications from beyond—run