two stools

The Woe of Johnny Two-Stools:

“F. I’ve noticed a constant need for comfort in myself. Is it generally the case that everyone feels like this?

A. This is one of the most important characteristics of our lives.

We sacrifice everything for this desire. We are willing to give up everything to go the path of least resistance.

Sometimes that desire becomes so strong that you just want to feel good and nothing else. Even when something is uncomfortable, you try to fix it in a way that it is comfortable.

F. Is there a way to get rid of it?

A. What to do is another question; we have to approach it from another side. This desire is a very big thing and every effort towards it is important; therefore every effort must be discussed separately, not all efforts together.

Sleeping is the most comfortable; trying to wake up is very uncomfortable. Later, when we partially wake up, we will feel how uncomfortable it is to sleep when something can happen at any moment. But it is necessary to reach that state.”

-Ouspensky, The Fourth Way

Q: Half awake, half asleep is excruciating. I wonder if I am the only one who experiences it this way?

A: Of course not, “Blessed is he with a Soul, Blessed is he without, but woe and strife to him with Soul in its conception”. Being in the position of ‘trying to sit between two stools’ is well known, in Beelzebub’s Tales this is called the ’Harnel Aoot’ and is the place of maximum tension in a given octave of transformation. ‘Eat’ the agony if possible, let it fully enter into the core of oneself, and transformation may occur quickly. After all ‘excruciating’ is merely another form of appearance of Being, and all Being is juicy when embraced impartially with the whole of oneself. If we can fully and honestly ‘suffer’ our own ‘contradictions’, this is the means of ‘fusion’, or Holy Reconciliation.